Knicks steal Game 1 of NBA Finals from Spurs with dramatic fourth-quarter comeback

The New York Knicks arrived in San Antonio before dawn and left with Game 1 of the NBA Finals. In a fourth-quarter eruption that erased a fourteen-point deficit, they beat the Spurs 105-95 at the Frost Bank Center, seizing the series lead 1-0 with their twelfth consecutive playoff victory. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks' engine, scored thirty points—thirteen of them in the final period—to steer his team through a night that began badly and ended in triumph.

This was the Knicks' first Finals appearance in twenty-seven years, and they arrived as something close to a revelation. They had dismantled the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers four games to none, then dispatched the Atlanta Hawks to reach this stage. The roster carried the weight of that long absence, but also the momentum of a team playing with nothing to lose. Brunson had briefly left the court in the first half with knee pain after a collision with Harrison Barnes, but he returned and held his team together when the Spurs seemed to have seized control.

San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama, the Western Conference MVP making his Finals debut, gave the home crowd reason to believe. He finished with twenty-six points and twelve rebounds, and for most of the night he looked like the generational talent the Spurs had built around. Dylan Harper, the Spurs' rookie, opened the game with ten points in the first quarter—the best output by a Finals rookie since 1998—and helped San Antonio build a ten-point lead early. Julian Champagnie, a sharpshooter, connected on five of six three-pointers in the first half to send the Spurs into halftime ahead 55-48. By the third quarter, San Antonio's advantage had swelled to twelve points at 62-50, and the Frost Bank Center roared with the certainty of a team in control.

But the Knicks had shown this kind of resilience before. In the Eastern Conference Finals against Cleveland, they had erased a twenty-two-point deficit in the fourth quarter alone. Karl-Anthony Towns, the Dominican-American forward, began to assert himself, scoring ten points and grabbing four rebounds to help the Knicks claw back to 76-76 with twelve minutes remaining. OG Anunoby, who would finish with seventeen points, suddenly found his rhythm from three-point range, scoring eight points in just over three minutes. The game became a back-and-forth affair, each team answering the other's runs.

Brunson took over in the closing minutes. He scored eight consecutive points to push the Knicks ahead 94-86 with just over six minutes left. The Spurs answered through Wembanyama, who hit a three-pointer and converted a layup to cut the margin to one point with 3:24 on the clock. For a moment, San Antonio seemed poised to steal the game back. A nine-point run gave the Spurs a 95-94 lead with the clock winding down. But Brunson had one more answer. The Knicks scored the final eleven points, with Brunson orchestrating the decisive possessions, and when the final buzzer sounded, New York had its first Finals victory in nearly three decades.

Wembanyama's eleven points and seven rebounds in the fourth quarter were not enough. Harper's sixteen points faded as the game wore on. Stephon Castle's seventeen points could not sustain San Antonio's early momentum. The Spurs, coached by Mitch Johnson, now face an immediate test: Game 2 returns to this same arena on Friday, and they must find a way to contain a Knicks team that has proven it can overcome any deficit. The series is young, but New York has seized the advantage that comes with stealing a road game in the Finals.