SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama surely knew he was overstating the obvious Wednesday night, when he pointed out that there are two possible outcomes Saturday in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
Option A: The Spurs win at home to extend the best-of-seven series.
Option B: The New York Knicks win and become NBA champions.
That’s it. It’s one or the other.
After 1,321 games — 1,230 in the regular season, 84 in the playoffs, six more in the play-in tournament and one between the Knicks and the Spurs that decided the in-season NBA Cup tournament — it really is that simple.
If the Spurs win in San Antonio, the season lives for at least one more game Tuesday night in New York.
If the Knicks win, all that will be left to truly wrap up this season is a championship parade in New York.
The Spurs trail the series 3-1, and Wembanyama, a third-year pro in the title round for the first time, understands the reality. Of the previous 38 teams that trailed 3-1 in the NBA Finals, 37 wound up watching the other team celebrate the title. And if that bit of history didn’t look daunting enough, the Spurs will try to climb out of their series hole after the biggest collapse in NBA Finals history, having wasted a 29-point lead on the way to losing Game 4 at Madison Square Garden.
“I think it’s going to go one of two ways,” Wembanyama said shortly after San Antonio’s 107-106 loss on Wednesday, when the Spurs were outscored 55-25 in the final 21 1/2 minutes. “One of two ways. A bad one and a good one. 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.”
Thursday was an off day for the teams, at least in terms of formal practices. Both are scheduled to get back to work on the court Friday in San Antonio, and then Game 5 is there on Saturday night — with the Knicks one win away from what would be their first championship in 53 years and third overall.
New York won the first two games of the series in San Antonio — rallying from double-digit deficits in both games — to take command. The Knicks now have a chance to become the first team since the Houston Rockets in 1995 to go 3-0 on the Spurs’ floor in a single postseason series.
“Our mentality has to be 0-0, the way it’s been,” Knicks guard Jalen Brunson said, repeating the mantra he has cited time and time again during New York’s postseason run. “It has to be that way, and I feel like us moving forward with that mindset can really benefit us. There’s nothing to celebrate. It’s not over yet, not even close.”
It’s common sense for the team with a 3-1 lead to hold off on celebrating, but in this case, there’s also some truth to what Brunson is saying.
Yes, the 3-1 deficit has been proven to be virtually insurmountable in NBA history; the only team that successfully escaped its grip in the league’s title series was the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, when they were led by forward LeBron James and rallied to beat the Golden State Warriors for that title.
This series, however, isn’t exactly a statistical runaway.
The Knicks have outscored the Spurs by a total of eight points over the four games. Shooting is basically even; the Knicks are at 44%, the Spurs at 43%. The Knicks have made 52 3-pointers, the Spurs 49. Free-throw success: Knicks 79%, Spurs 78%. The Knicks have three more rebounds, and both teams have exactly 90 assists through four games.
“Just take this one game at a time,” said Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox, who took heavy criticism for electing to try a layup — which was blocked — in the final seconds of Game 4 instead of taking time off the clock with a one-point lead. “It obviously looks like a steep hill, but this is something that’s happened before. Take this thing one game at a time. We’ve been in a position to win all these games. We’ve been up double digits. We have to figure out what we need to do to be able to put some of these games away.”
It has been a baffling problem for the Spurs.
They led Game 1 by one with 1:51 left, then lost after the Knicks finished on an 11-0 run. They had the ball in a tie game with 11 seconds left in Game 2, then lost after Wembanyama threw a pass that Stephon Castle never saw and became a turnover that led to Brunson’s winning free throw.
And now, this: a 29-point lead wasted in Game 4, and they still led by one until Anunoby’s tip-in with 2.1 seconds left.
“We have to try to put this behind us,” Fox said.
If they don’t, the Knicks’ long wait for a third title could end Saturday night.