The Knicks are +164 underdogs tonight in San Antonio. Read that again. The team that just completed the largest comeback in NBA Finals history — erasing a 29-point third-quarter deficit to win 107-106 on a tip-in with 1.2 seconds left — is the team Vegas thinks is going to lose. The team leading the series 3-1. The team one win from ending a 53-year championship drought. That team is the underdog.
Perfect. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I have been a Knicks fan my entire life, and being a Knicks fan means you are constitutionally incapable of feeling comfortable with a lead. A 3-1 series lead doesn’t feel like control. It feels like an invitation for the universe to do what it has always done to us. It feels like 1994, when we were right there and watched Hakeem Olajuwon rip it away. It feels like every December when the team starts 18-12 and you tell yourself this is the year, and then February happens. Being a Knicks fan is a psychological condition, not a hobby. And the condition does not have a cure. It has a temporary remission, and the remission begins tonight at 8:30 at Frost Bank Center, if Jalen Brunson has anything to say about it.
Brunson has been the most locked-in player in this series. He dropped 36 points, 7 assists, and 3 steals in Game 4 — the game where the Knicks were down 29 and the entire basketball universe had already written the obituary. He’s averaging 27.3 points per game in the Finals. He hit a three with two minutes left that made it a one-possession game when every rational person in the building had already accepted the loss. Brunson does not accept losses. Brunson does not flinch. And after OG Anunoby tipped in the game-winner and the Garden detonated, Brunson walked to the podium and said this:
https://x.com/ESPNNBA/status/2064946755272143158
“Not even close.” That’s not bravado. That’s a man who has been in the fire for four straight games and understands that the fire doesn’t stop until someone holds the trophy. The Knicks haven’t held that trophy since 1973. Richard Nixon was president. The Mets had won the World Series four years earlier. The Jets had won the Super Bowl that same season. New Yorkers in 1973 had recent emotional support systems. We have nothing. We are running on fumes and fury and fifty-three years of compound-interest heartbreak.
San Antonio is going to be loud tonight. Wembanyama is going to be seven-foot-three and terrifying and the Spurs crowd is going to believe that a 3-1 deficit is survivable because they watched the Cavs do it in 2016. Fine. Let them believe it. The Knicks are the team that was down 29 points in the third quarter of a Finals game and decided to win anyway. There is no deficit in basketball that scares this roster. There is no road environment hostile enough. There are five guys on this team who will rip your heart out from any position on the floor at any moment, and they do not care what the oddsmakers think about it.
They made the Knicks underdogs. They gave Jalen Brunson a chip to put on his shoulder for a clinch game. I cannot think of a dumber strategic decision.
Game 5. Tonight. 8:30. Let’s end this.
