NEW YORK — The New York Knicks being on the verge of an NBA title only feels unprecedented to the legions of fans who weren’t born the last time it happened in 1973.
But the task in front of the San Antonio Spurs — winning the title after losing the first two games at home — really has never been achieved.
The Knicks will try to inch closer to a cathartic championship and the Spurs will aim to climb back into the NBA Finals when New York hosts San Antonio in Game 3 Monday night.
The Knicks took a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series Friday night. The host Spurs overcame a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit before Victor Wembanyama missed a jumper just before the buzzer as New York hung on for a 105-104 win.
The win was the 13th straight for the Knicks, who relied on their usual defensive stoutness as well as a resilience they hadn’t needed since May 19, when they overcame a 22-point fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Cleveland Cavaliers 115-104 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.
“It’s an amazing feeling as a coach to know how mentally tough your team is, no matter what the situation is in front of them,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “To see them continue to fight and fight and fight and fight, no matter what the score is, no matter how much time is on the clock, it’s just a fantastic feeling.”
Winning Games 3 and 4 would not only match the longest postseason winning streak in NBA history — the Golden State Warriors opened the 2017 playoffs with 15 straight wins — but allow the Knicks to clinch their long-anticipated NBA title in New York, which has been buzzing for weeks.
“The NBA is tough,” Brown said. “You don’t get to experience what I’m experiencing with this group a ton. And it is a freaking joy to be around.”
Game 3 will be the first NBA Finals game in New York since June 25, 1999, when the Spurs clinched the championship with a 78-77 win in Game 5.
“Fans have earned the right and deserve the right to see Finals basketball be played here at Madison Square Garden,” said Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, who grew up in New Jersey. “For this to be the first game in a long time that they have seen Finals basketball, it’s up to us to bring it, give them something to cheer for, give them something to get loud for and also give them something to believe in.”
The Spurs will need to create a historic moment of their own to win their first title since 2014.
San Antonio, which also squandered a double-digit lead in a 105-95 loss in Wednesday’s Game 1, is just the third team to drop the first two games of the NBA Finals at home. The 1993 Phoenix Suns fell to the Chicago Bulls in six games while the 1995 Orlando Magic were swept by the Houston Rockets.
“We need to capitalize — actually use all the efforts we (used),” Wembanyama said. “It felt like we did a lot, we did a lot of things wrong. But we also were relentless and kept pushing, but kind of wasted that effort.”
The Knicks have made things difficult for Wembanyama — and, by extension, the Spurs, whose 199 points over the first two games are by far their fewest in a two-game span in these playoffs.
Wembanyama is averaging 27.5 points in the first two games of the Finals, but he’s shooting 40.5% on 21 field goal attempts per contest. The 7-foot-4 matchup nightmare averaged 23.2 points per game while shooting 51% and hoisting just 15.2 shots per night over his first 17 playoff games.
Yet the increased volume in the Finals has come in an inconsistent manner for Wembanyama, who attempted eight of his 21 shots in the first half of Game 1 before he had just four shots in the first half Friday.
“I have to make sure there’s environments that the ball finds him,” Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson said. “There are times I think when he was open on rolls or around the paint and his teammates (have) got to give him the ball.
“But yeah, four shots in a half on this stage is not acceptable.”
