Knicks squander golden opportunity, miss chance to take commanding NBA Finals lead

NEW YORK — Mike Brown knows that the instant, immediate-aftermath story coming out of Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals will be the free-throw discrepancy between his New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs — a 24-8 chasm in the second half, with the Spurs outscoring their hosts by 14 points after intermission in a game they won 115-111 to get on the board in the best-of-seven series.

>He knows this because he spent the bulk of his 12-minute postgame press conference talking about the gap in free throws, and about his confusion over it, and about how he very much hopes that it won’t happen again in Game 4 on Wednesday night.

>“And it's going to be that, because I said it,” Brown said. “The story is going to be there.”

>But while the Knicks taking 10 fewer free throws overall and making seven fewer, in a game they lost by four is a story, it’s not the story. Not really, anyway.

>“That ain't cost us the game,” Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns said.

>No, the story is that, in the franchise’s first NBA Finals home game in 27 years, the other shoe finally dropped.

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>For the first time in 47 days, Brown’s club ended the night on the short side of the scoreboard. The second-longest winning streak in NBA playoff history is over. The compilations of mind-bending statistics and considerations of this team’s standing in the all-time firmament are, for now, on hold. The Knicks have lost; they are no longer invincible.

>In fact, after a night where they couldn’t prevent Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle from playing like the ascendant megawatt talents they’d been all season before Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio, the Knicks now appear to be something that they haven’t since they couldn’t get a handle on CJ McCollum nearly two months ago: vulnerable.

>“They obviously kicked our ass tonight, and that doesn’t feel good,” Knicks guard Landry Shamet said. “That stings.”

New York's 13-game playoff winning streak ended as turnovers mounted, Karl-Anthony Towns disappeared and San Antonio finally got on the board.Al Bello via Getty ImagesFor the third time in three games in this series, the Knicks came out on their heels, allowing the Spurs to throw the first punch and open up a first-quarter lead. For the third time in three games in this series, the Knicks responded with a stronger effort in the second quarter — this time, a 42-24 haymaker that sent them into halftime up by seven, and had a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden in full throat, dreaming of an insurmountable 3-0 lead.

>Those dreams were dashed, though, when the Knicks couldn’t hold onto the golden opportunity in their grasp, seeing it slip through their fingers like one of the many errant passes they tossed and bobbled on Monday.

>“To be in the position that we were going into halftime, to come out in the third the way we did and to not find a way to win the game obviously is disappointing,” Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns said.

>After committing turnovers on their first two possessions of the first half, helping San Antonio race out to an early lead, the Knicks also turned the ball over on their first two possessions of the second half. Those empty trips to start the third quarter fueled a quick 6-0 Spurs run; before the Garden faithful could settle back into their seats, that seven-point lead had been slashed to a single point.

>“Offensively, we were about as stagnant as I've seen us all year, which helped with the 13 turnovers,” Brown said. “If you're in an NBA Finals game and you have 13 turnovers to their eight, and on those 13 turnovers, they generated 21 points, and on their eight turnovers, we generated seven, it's going to be tough.”

>“Turned the ball over. Didn't execute. Didn't do what got us 13 straight wins in a row,” Towns said. “That's how you lose a game. We didn't do what we've been doing for 13. We decided to do something different, and it ain't going to work. Throwing the ball away is a clear indication of how you're going to lose the game, especially in the playoffs.”

>Another negative indicator for the Knicks: Towns, the most valuable player of the first two games of the Finals, scoring just 11 points on 10 shot attempts — and going scoreless and without an assist in more than 10 fourth-quarter minutes.

>Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson juggled his defensive matchups, more frequently putting the 6-foot-6 Castle on Towns and allowing Wembanyama to effectively roam in a roving one-man zone along the back line of the defense — a cross-match that, as has often been the case in the past, seemed to frustrate and limit Towns, stifling his driving and high-post playmaking, and short-circuiting the Knicks’ overall offensive attack in the process:

It’s a continuation of a worrisome trend that’s seen Towns’ touches, shooting attempts and overall effectiveness wane since the second half of Game 2 — one that Brown attributed in large part to an overall lack of urgency, pace and intentionality in New York’s offensive approach.

>“It was the way we played and the things that we were doing offensively,” Brown said. “We were just coming down and just basically playing drag. We'd get the first screen, and then we literally just stood and watched. There was no movement. There was no — like, sometimes KAT has to flash to the elbow. Sometimes, he's got to post up.

>“Because they are junking the game up by just putting Vic in one of the two corners. So if they junk the game up, I can call a play. But sometimes, you're going to have to just move and cut, and pass the ball quicker, and drive the ball quicker, because it's almost a zone that they are in, to a certain degree, and we didn't do a good job of attacking it.”

>The numbers bear that out. After scoring more than 1.8 points per possession in that torrid second quarter, the Knicks managed just 1.02 points per play in the second half, and a dismal 0.87 in a fourth quarter that saw them shoot 7-for-27 from the field and 2-for-14 from 3-point range, with trip after languid trip ending with a hope-and-a-prayer bailout shot late in the clock.

>“I liked some of the looks [we got in the fourth quarter], but I also think we were pretty stagnant,” said Knicks star Jalen Brunson, who finished with a team-high 32 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists but also 5 turnovers. “There's definitely things that we can learn from. Especially with our approach when we start the game and with the way we start the half. I don't think we did well, and I don't think I did well either.”

Sometimes, those late-game prayers were answered; Brunson scored 12 of New York’s 20 fourth-quarter points, and he and OG Anunoby made triples in the final minute that cut what had been an eight-point deficit to two with 9.4 seconds remaining. More often than not, though, the Knicks’ late looks clanged clear or rattled out, with Towns, Shamet, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart combining to go 0-for-12 from the floor in the deciding frame.

>“I got some great looks,” said Shamet, who entered Game 3 shooting 67.6% from 3 over his previous eight games, but who went just 1-for-7 on Monday. “I had a few that were down and out. Process over outcome. I’m more upset about some of the things defensively that I’ve been priding myself on. I had a few possessions tonight where I didn’t do my job like I needed to. That’s fixable.”

>The Knicks walk away from Game 3 feeling like there’s plenty they can fix. Like doing a better job of limiting Wembanyama’s rolls to the basket and more effectively taking away driving lanes for Castle, De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper.

>“There's a couple shots that didn't fall that we had good looks on,” Hart said. “I feel like we didn't get enough stops during the game. We get stops, we play our brand of basketball, and you're not worried about makes and misses.”

>They can try to do a better job of avoiding early fouls — Bridges picked up two quick ones that effectively ended his night before it even started, as he utterly lacked rhythm and flow for the bulk of his 29 quiet minutes — that can put the Spurs into the bonus for large stretches of quarters. They can try to play stronger with the ball, taking better care of possessions and — maybe above all else — just moving the ball and their bodies more intently.

>“We were just playing a lot of drag into what we call ‘summertime,’ which is just kind of ball movement and body movement,” Brown said. “We just wanted to stand and watch one guy dribble a ton. And then, when the ball got passed, there were no quick decisions by the guy receiving the basketball [...] Sometimes you've just got to go by guys. But you've got to be smart. You have to take care of the basketball. You have to space right. You have to move the ball. You have to move bodies. We've done that quite a bit, and we didn't do a good job of it tonight.”

>

>Why, exactly, the Knicks struggled to execute those principles — the bedrock of what’s made them such a war rig over the past six-plus weeks — is the question that Brown, Brunson, Towns and Co. have to answer between now and tipoff of Game 4 on Wednesday night.

>“I think it was maybe just a little bit of, you know, antsiness — us trying to make plays faster,” said Knicks guard Jordan Clarkson, who checked in early after getting a DNP-CD in Game 2 and chipped in 10 points off the bench, but also committed a pair of costly turnovers. “I think as a team, it's just something we look at and we change [...] I just think it was us, you know? Coming back home. Playing this game. A lot of energy.”

>The energy that came with Game 3 — the first-in-27-years of it all, the heightened-security-protocols-because-of-the-president of it all — is now past the Knicks. What’s left is a team with some questions to answer, and the pressure to do it now, lest the golden opportunity they had coming home up 2-0 melt into a miserable scenario where they head back to Texas tied 2-2, with the Spurs once again holding home-court advantage in a three-game sprint to the finish line. After a miraculous month and a half, the other shoe has dropped. The Knicks need to make sure that their next step puts their best foot forward.

>“At the end of the day, whether we won or lost, we're going to do the same thing,” Hart said. “Watch tomorrow, get better and prepare for the game on [Wednesday]. Same mentality.”