The Ringer NBA Show
The Knicks Pull Off a Stunning, Historic Comeback to Win Game 4 | Group Chat
11 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What was the significance of OG Anunoby’s game-winning tip-in?
Hello, and welcome to Group Chat. I am Justin Verrier, and joining me, Rob Mahoney, J. Kyle Mann. Woo! What's going on? What did we just witness?
I'm still not sure, but do we want to open with like 20 to 30 on your garden before we get to the garden?
Or Yuzu substituting for citrus as you guys.
It's good talk. It's good chatter. We could, but my brain is just a replay of go New York, go New York, go on a complete loop because I can't actually put thoughts together because we first witnessed one of the historic shooting performances in the first half, and then that gave way to one of the biggest finals comebacks we've ever seen. Holy shit, Rob.
Why don't we just go around the horn saying holy shit in different ways?
Holy shit? Holy shit. Holy shit.
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Chapter 2: What were the critical mistakes made by De'Aaron Fox in the final moments?
Holy shit!
I think this is genuinely the most insane playoff game of my lifetime. Certainly of my sentient basketball lifetime for all the reasons you just described. And the Knicks had every chance after embarrassing themselves in the first half in front of Adam Sandler and the Heim sisters and everybody. To just, like, pack this thing in. Well, yeah, I mean, two's a crowd.
The majority, the quorum of Heim sisters, they could have just, like, packed it in and played for game five, and instead they took a stand and did something genuinely unthinkable with all-time resolve. Like, it's always crazy watching basketball history happen right in front of you, but OGN and OB, welcome to basketball history.
Yeah. I mean, that's going to be a mural somewhere in one of the boroughs, I would assume. Just him like, you know, we can get into the details of the play. But I mean, like in this game, within this game, we saw two of the most epic meltdown crash outs that I've seen in recent memory. I mean, should we just go half by half? Like start? Because there was two crazy stories within.
Chapter 3: How did the Knicks manage to come back from a significant deficit?
Yeah, I know. I know. Well, we start with the end. Let's just start with that final play, because as I was going through it, I had two pretty bold reactions. One was like, what is Jalen Brunson doing? Because he took an ISO ball play on the first possession before that, and then he kind of pulls up from pretty deep.
But then when I see OG kind of have a free reign to the rim, I was like, was that planned in advance that he was putting it up there in order to get the putback? And having said that, where are the bodies on OG? Pretty much the entire game, you're like, oh, OG and Inobi, open again, wide open. And he's just drilling shot after shot for shot.
And he's just wide open, free reign to the rim, and nobody boxes him out. I'm just like, how? How so many times did they blow that?
Well, I'm not looking at the box score right now. I'm not convinced he has missed a three at any point of this series.
Chapter 4: What factors contributed to the Spurs' collapse in the second half?
From the corners, it just feels as automatic as it has ever felt. But yeah, the strategic decision to not have a defender on the inbounder, you kind of understand it conceptually in a one-point game, right? Like something that's this close, you want to have the extra body to kind of roam the paint.
You want to maybe have some flexibility if you're going to be switching this much to opportunistically double. But good Lord, you got to put a body on that guy. And in the Spurs defense, OG Ananobi, just like an 100th percentile effort to sprint in and get a hand on that ball in the first place, out tipping.
I think it was Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell who were basically there to scoop it up if OG had been like a fraction of a second late on that play.
Yeah, you got to know that in that situation, granted they'd called it, you know, there had been some loose ball fouls on the offensive glass for, you know, Carter Bryant trucking Cat throughout the, you know, this game and the past game. There's been a lot of trucking going on, but you had to kind of They were watching the ball fly through the air.
Granted, the sequence before that, Josh Hart speaks to the speed of the NBA game. Josh Hart just for a moment watched a shot in the air and Castle swooped in and got an offensive rebound that he almost converted, which would have been cataclysmic for New York considering all the effort they put in coming back.
But I thought Fox was just kind of – they should have just sent an onslaught to the glass and just hit somebody because I don't think they were going to call something in that situation. Yeah. You've got to have the presence.
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Chapter 5: How did the Knicks' defense impact the Spurs' shooting performance?
And maybe they were tired. I don't know. There were a lot of mental lapses in that second half, but I thought that they would have gone to the glass harder as a unit.
Well, and to wind it back a little bit, was it not OG who also got the stop on De'Aaron Fox on that leak out in transition as well?
Why did Fox...
try that of all the people to try that against that was the one i was like dude you gotta like pull this out like maybe he thought he was gonna get fouled but i didn't like against anyone yeah like why didn't he just pull it out and waste clock or at least force a follow a couple seconds later it's just like and then that gave way to the alvarado just almost getting a backcourt violation and we all learned like that your body can go back there but the ball does that was
He clearly knew the rule.
If you're a small guy and you're getting pressured that hard, I assume he just has that dictionary definition in his mind here.
I think Darren Fox's decision-making down the stretch of this game was absolutely maddening. You know, he is supposed to be the calming influence for the Spurs. He's supposed to be the steady hand in these situations. They give him the ball over Castle and Harper in some of these situations.
For one, it's just really clear that he's too much of a make-or-miss jump shooter to really occupy that role for this team. Like, he doesn't have the stability to drive and finish or even really draw contact in a way that you want your lead guard to in that moment. But in this spot specifically...
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Chapter 6: What were the key moments that defined the Knicks' comeback?
I mean, they get the tap out in transition. It is a crazy loose ball. I think the play ends up ending at like 11 seconds. Easily could have dribbled it out and drained clock. Easily could have kind of taken the chance to actually calm things down. And instead, I would say he makes the Drew Holiday play from the Bucs championship run.
Remember, Drew wrote through that crazy alley-oop to Giannis that if he misses, it's an infamous play.
Mm-hmm.
They didn't miss. Darren Fox does, and now I think this has to hang around him. This game was in his hands maybe more than anybody else's, and he blew it. He threw it away.
I think you saw the tide shift really. I tweeted this out. The hot shooting of the first half, I think, just gave them the malaise and the fog that the Knicks were wandering around in where they were trying to find the ground, find their resolve, find their composure, their will to fight back.
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Chapter 7: How do the hosts assess the implications for Game 5 after this historic win?
During that time, the Spurs were playing so loose that it just got a little too loose. That sequence at the start of the third quarter where five offensive One of my friends that I – you have your people you kind of – I don't know if you all are this way or you all seem like you're really dialed in. I mean, I have my people I have ongoing dialogues with during the game.
And I texted back, well, I text you guys and you don't always answer, so I'm just like barking up the wrong text friend tree here.
We're locked in, man.
I can't do two things at once. Well, I'm just kind of – but anyway, so I mean – I was texting him, and it was pretty hilarious because I was like, man, that was a terrible shot, the Champagny one. And then I was like, ooh, that's two straight bad threes in a row. Three straight in a row. Four straight in a row. Five in a row.
And as that's going on, the Knicks are slowly kind of going from this melted goo on the court at MSG, and suddenly they took physical form again, and they were like, wait a minute. I thought that was the turning point.
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Chapter 8: What final thoughts do the hosts have regarding the series moving forward?
That was when the shift happened in the game, in my opinion.
Yeah.
I want to get into this more in detail, but we have a weirdly timed break that we need to turn to right now. So why don't we all take a deep breath? You kidding me? Just take a breather here. We'll be right back.
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All right, so as Kyle was kind of alluding to before the break there, the Spurs, despite the hot shooting in the first half, four for 20 in the third quarter, just in totality in that third quarter. And then you had the late mistakes that we mentioned. Even the final play where it was Harper, I believe, inbounding to Castle, the ball was just like too low for him to even get a shot up from there.
As much as this was a historic, miraculous Knicks comeback, and we got to give them all the credit. They deserve all the credit. It kind of was the Spurs melting down in a way that I've never seen, but I guess we should expect to a certain degree for a team this young and that has proven in these sort of tight situations that like the Knicks really do have that edge there.
I mean, it takes two to make history. Like, you need the historic implosion to make the historic comeback. I thought the only moments where the Spurs looked like they were in control in the second half were there were a couple of Dylan Harper drives that were very direct, like straight downhill. He felt in control.
I know we... I mean, just our parodies of ourselves, we're talking about Dylan Harper a lot of the time, but bumping through OG and Inobi for just, like, an easy turnaround, not a normal thing, and so I don't think we have to be normal about it. Those possessions I thought were good.
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