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.

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“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.

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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…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/knicks-squander-golden-opportunity-miss-chance-to-take-commanding-nba-finals-lead-065139933.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2026-06-09 06:51:00

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