Mike Lupica: OG Anunoby’s tip has Knicks one win from writing next great New York sports story 64%
By Mike Lupica0%
6/11/2026, 12:37:31 PM
Topics: Basketball, Nba Finals
BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Hindsight Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 53.5% saturation with 548 hits. Analysis detected 2,618 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,024 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58.5% and a BS Rank of 64% (7,739 of 21,172 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 63.50% of the article peer group.
So the Knicks are one game away from winning it all again, heading down to Texas to see if they can get that game, the way they tried to do that in June of 1994, when they had three wins against the Houston Rockets and went looking for a fourth one they never got.
Now these Knicks are one win away because of OG Anunoby's tip in Game 4, the greatest night of basketball New York City has had since Willis Reed limped out and they beat Wilt Chamberlain and the Lakers once, back when Wilt looked like the tallest guy in the world the way Victor Wembanyama does.
The old Knicks won a championship that night, first of their two.
These Knicks, once again playing a kind of team ball as fine as the city game, didn’t win the team’s first title in 53 years on Wednesday.
It just felt as if they did when they came all the way back from 29 points down — as if coming from 53 years down — until OG Anunoby came flying to the basket and tipped home Jalen Brunson’s miss to make it 107-106 for the home team.
“See the ball,” the great Red Holzman famously barked when the Knicks were on defense.
It was offense this time.
But OG sure saw the ball, saw an opening and knifed between all the Spurs near the basket and officially made this as great a day or night as any New York sports team has ever had, whether winning a title or on its way to one.
Now the Knicks are one win away from writing a sports story as great as any sports story the city has ever known, the Larry O’Brien Trophy right there in front of them.
They were 29 down.
They were 20 down with 9:33 left.
But then OG wouldn’t miss and Brunson wouldn’t, either.
The Spurs were still ahead by a point near the very end but then De’Aaron Fox drove to the basket after chasing down a loose ball when he should have pulled the ball back.
And then there was OG, chasing down Fox, seemingly coming all the way from 33rd St. to do it, blocking the shot that set up his winning tip a few seconds later.
Then Mike Breen was shouting “It’s good, it’s good, it’s good” the way Howie Rose once shouted “Matteau, Matteau, Matteau” when the Rangers were on their way to winning their first title in 54 years.
That overtime goal against the Devils put the Rangers four wins away from the Stanley Cup.
This unforgettable game the Knicks played on Wednesday night put them one win away, a win that could come as early as Saturday night in San Antonio, one that would end a run for the ages.
Now they have won 14 out of their last 15.
Now they have produced the biggest and loudest and most memorable comeback win in the history of the NBA Finals.
A ball rolled through Bill Buckner’s legs one time at old Shea Stadium and the Mets were one win away.
Forty years after that the Knicks are right there, that exact same place.
All because after everything that happened across a couple of crazy hours at the Garden, as crazy as the place has ever seen, Game 4 ended with a ball coming off OG Anunoby’s fingertips the way it did.
A Larry Johnson 4 of a night.
“The ball went over my head, so I couldn't really dunk it.
So, I just tried to tip it in softly, and it went in,” said Anunoby, this most soft-spoken man, when it was over.
Brunson had made so many shots as the Knicks came roaring back in the second half, those last nine minutes most of all.
But then he missed the shot that would have won it, over the outstretched arm of Wembanyama, whose own fingertips seemed as if they could have touched the retired jerseys at that moment.
But there was Anunoby, the man who had inbounded the ball to Brunson, finishing off the game of his life, above it all.
In so many ways, he is to these Knicks as Dave DeBusschere was to the old Knicks, at both ends of the court.
But Dave couldn’t fly like this.
OG didn’t win it all for his team in that moment.
Again: It just felt as if he did, as he put the Spurs into a 1-3 hole that only one team in history — the LeBron James Cavs of 2016 — ever managed to climb out of.
These Knicks — new Knicks absolutely playing the way the old ones did — have gotten knocked down before in these playoffs.
They had come from 22 down in the fourth quarter of Game 1 against the Cavs.
But they had not been knocked down quite like this, all of the Spurs making everything they looked at in the first half.
So the Spurs were ahead by 29 in the second quarter.
Still ahead 81-52 in the third quarter.
The Knicks started to come back.
Only then there was another bad patch to start the fourth and it was 95-75, under 10 remaining.
Later Brunson, who would finish with 36 points to lead the Knicks again, would describe the comeback thusly:
“It was really just we need to chip away.
We need to hit singles.”
They did, until that tip from Anunoby that turned into a tape-measure home run.
OG: Young guy playing like an OG who would have fit right in with the old Knicks.
OG: 33 points on this night, 10-for-15 shooting, 7-for-9 from beyond the 3-point line.
Wembanyama had towered above everybody for so much of this series until shrinking to the size of the jockey down the stretch.
Finally, it was OG turning into the biggest guy in the gym.
There have been other basketball nights in New York.
Never one quite like this.
See the ball, the way OG did.
See the trophy.
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