The New York Knicks had an opportunity to take a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden. A victory would have effectively decided the series – and left the door open for their third consecutive sweep. Instead, they let the San Antonio Spurs right back into the final series of the 2026 campaign.
Jalen Brunson's five turnovers were the game's highest mark in that column. The giveaways weren't exclusively the fault of the point guard: the Knicks' lack of off-ball movement made way for an offensive overreliance on the Captain that they spent three rounds correcting. Star wing OG Anunoby confirmed after the game that something was simply off.
"We just weren't on the same page," the wing told reporters after the defeat at the hands of San Antonio.
Respectfully, it looked like it. The Knicks struggled with self-admitted entitlement problems earlier in the season, and they might've come back – in the return of the NBA Finals to a city that had been waiting for almost three decades. At the very least, they know exactly what to fix going forward. And they've done it before.
Knicks were supposed to be past this issue, but they can beat it again
Possessions are valued at a premium throughout the postseason, and New York's 13 turnovers made way for 21 Spurs points throughout Monday night's Game 3. The Knicks, in contrast, scored just seven off of San Antonio's eight turnovers.
Complaints about the officiating throughout the game were substantiated when the head of referee development and NBA Vice President, Monty McCutchen, confirmed Tuesday on ESPN that Victor Wembanyama should have been called for a foul when he threw Jalen Brunson to the ground.
The league, however, determined late Tuesday night that a flagrant foul would not be retroactively assessed to the superstar Frenchman.
That could fuel the Knicks. So could the fact that they just lost a game, by four points, in which they shot 18-22 from the free throw line.
Throughout the Knicks' 2025-26 season, there were several pivotal stretches during which the locker room was reportedly disjointed. The players shared the same goal as new head coach Mike Brown: winning an NBA Championship in New York City. But there was a gap between their desires and the results of their execution.
In late January, Mikal Bridges cited entitlement as a potential harbinger of the weird and unproductive vibes surrounding the group after their NBA Cup victory in Las Vegas. It took several more months for the Knicks to gel, proving that it was likely always going to be a non-linear process, but the first domino had fallen.
New York rolled their way to 13 straight victories. Their experience overcoming adversity throughout the regular season taught them just how green the grass on the other side of the fence is – or isn't – and being backed into a corner by the Atlanta Hawks converted all of that knowledge into changes in playstyle.
These Knicks spent over six weeks proving their best basketball is better than that of the competition. They didn't come close to playing it on Monday night, regardless of the officiating. But they'll have another chance to get their third win at home in Game 3.
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