For 47 minutes, the San Antonio Spurs had done everything right. They'd hammered the New York Knicks by 29 points, silenced Madison Square Garden, and positioned themselves to steal Game 4 and level the NBA finals at two games apiece. Then, in the span of seconds, one decision unraveled everything.
With the Spurs clinging to a 106-105 lead and less than 15 seconds on the clock Wednesday night, Jalen Brunson's floating bank shot bounced loose into the backcourt. De'Aaron Fox sprinted after the loose ball, racing toward the rim with only OG Anunoby trailing behind him. The play looked like a gift. All Fox had to do was pull the ball out, force a foul, and send the series back to San Antonio tied.
Instead, he attacked.
Anunoby chased him down and rejected the layup attempt. Seconds later, Brunson missed a 31-footer. Anunoby crashed the boards and tipped home the winner with 1.2 seconds remaining, completing the largest comeback in NBA finals history. The Knicks won 107-106.
Fox did not mince words in explaining his decision afterward. "I just thought I'd be able to outrun them. That's it," he said when asked why he didn't dribble out the clock and force a foul.
The explanation landed poorly. On TNT's post-game show, Charles Barkley was blunt. "That was a dumbass play," he said. "He did not have to shoot that ball." The assessment, which quickly circulated across social media, reflected the verdict spreading through the basketball world.
Yet reducing the collapse to a single possession would let San Antonio off far too easily. The real damage had already been done long before Fox found himself alone on the floor.
The Spurs scored 76 points in the first half. They managed just 30 in the second. The crisp ball movement and long-distance accuracy that had shredded the Knicks' defense vanished. San Antonio got away from the systems that had built their enormous advantage, and New York chipped away relentlessly.
"Obviously let that get away, being up 29 points," Fox said. "Got away from doing the things that got us up and put ourselves in that position."
He pointed to a loss of pace and rhythm. "The ball wasn't moving the same way that it did in the second half like it did in the first half," he said. "We didn't get a flow on the offensive end in the second half."
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson diagnosed the same illness. "We got away from what got us the 76 points in the first half," he said. "Then you saw at times the aggressiveness and just conviction that we played with early on dissipate a little bit. They made some shots. That's where you felt the momentum a little bit."
Johnson added: "To put as much good work into that first half as we did, get the lead that we had and not finish the job, is disappointing to say the least."
Victor Wembanyama, who had tumbled to the floor during Fox's fateful attempt, offered his own assessment. "We clearly weren't the most hungry in the second half," he said. "Stopped moving the ball. Stopped executing."
What made Fox's decision particularly costly was its timing. Two minutes earlier, the Spurs could have absorbed the mistake. Instead, it came when there was no margin for error. The play didn't create the collapse so much as seal it, erasing their final opportunity to survive their own self-sabotage.
"Going down 3-1 is obviously very different," Fox acknowledged. "But we feel like we have a team to be able to come back from this."
San Antonio will need to prove it. For now, they'll have to reckon with the weight of a 29-point advantage that evaporated and a half-second decision that turned a potential series-equalizer into the beginning of a potential championship collapse.
Author James Rodriguez: "Fox's attempt wasn't the Spurs' undoing, but it was the precise moment they confirmed they'd done it to themselves."
Comments