Spurs struggle to explain Game 4 collapse: ‘We gave this one up. It hurts’

NEW YORK — Once again, a great NBA team is left to explain the unexplainable after losing in a most unimaginable way.

This time it’s the San Antonio Spurs, who are now in the dubious position of owning the biggest in-game collapse in NBA Finals history, blowing a 29-point lead in the second half to lose Game 4 to the New York Knicks, 107-106.

OG Anunoby’s soaring putback with 1.2 seconds to go was the finishing touch on a slow-drip collapse that began when the Knicks started to cut into the Spurs’ 29-point advantage with 9:27 left in the third quarter.

“What’s going through my mind right now? I think it’s going to go one of two ways. … A bad one and a good one,” Spurs star Victor Wembanyama said. “The bad one would be giving up. The good one would be getting stronger through this, getting more together. I know this is what we’re going to do.”

Added Spurs rookie Dylan Harper: “It’s hit me, but probably (I’m in) shock.”

“That’s a game where you sit there and you say you had the type of personnel that you had, you shot the ball decent, played a pretty clean game,” San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson said. “Then kind of didn’t finish the job.”

Again, there is nothing any single Spur, analyst or Texan could say about what transpired at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night to make it understandable.

The Spurs made a finals-record 14 3s in the first half, set a finals record with a 19-point lead after one quarter by a road team, and led by 27 at halftime — nearly a record. And then they scored 30 points in the second half after scoring 76 in the first.

The same sort of thing happened to the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. Up 22 with eight minutes to play, the Cavs offense went cold and let Jalen Brunson get scorching hot. The Knicks came back to tie the score and won in overtime. Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson had a dazed look and a maniacal laugh after that one; by the end of the series, he was talking about the Cavs beating the Knicks on “analytics” even though New York was headed for a sweep.

The Spurs didn’t quite sound like they were cracking up, and they have a lot less time to recover from what happened at the Garden if they want to save their season. But these are the kinds of losses that are tough to come back from, and now San Antonio finds itself down in the finals, 3-1.

“It hurts,” Spurs sixth man Keldon Johnson said. “We gave this one up. It hurts. I think it hurts everybody, from players to staff. We put a lot into it.”

Johnson added, “It’s a tough pill to swallow,” and “I feel like we got comfortable and things happened.” The Spurs shot 8-of-39 from the field and 3-of-17 on 3s in the second half.

Wembanyama shot 2-of-9 in the fourth quarter. He missed two free throws with 1:47 left and San Antonio still up by a point.

De’Aaron Fox had a chance to either dribble out the clock or get fouled and maybe put the Spurs up by three inside of 10 seconds to go, but instead drove in for a layup that was blocked by Anunoby.

And then no one boxed out Anunoby as he crashed the rim to corral Brunson’s miss.

“Bounce off the rim the right way. He tipped it in the right way. It went in,” said Harper, who was closest to Anunoby on the final play. “I could play ‘wish I could have did this, wish I could have did that.’ But at the end of the day, he tipped the ball, and it went in the rim.

“I definitely thought I had a hand on it. I definitely think I helped put the ball in the rim. But just got to box out.”

Mitch Johnson said he told his players to let the loss hurt Wednesday night but to flush it Thursday as they begin to prepare for Game 5. He also said the Spurs “have dictated the outcome” of each game, which means he’s pinning their 3-1 deficit on mistakes they’ve made.

Wembanyama said the path forward would be found through “holding each other accountable. Communicating. Not pointing fingers.”

“And after that, we either got it or we don’t,” said Wemby, who led the Spurs with 24 points and 13 rebounds.

Harper and Keldon Johnson spoke about a strong belief that remains on the Spurs’ side.

“The main thing is that belief is there,” Keldon Johnson said. “We believe. Our belief is as high as ever. You don’t get here without belief, without faith in each other, and that’s not going to change now. If it was easy, everybody would do it.”

It sounds nice, but what are any of them supposed to say? The Spurs simply couldn’t lose Wednesday’s game, and they did.