Box Grades: Spurs’ glorious season ends with a hard lesson

I must admit, the way this series has gone, I felt pretty certain heading into the fourth that San Antonio was going to lose this game. Simply put, the Spurs showed time and again that they could play well enough to hold a lead against the Knicks late in the game, but inevitably that edge would wither away in the face of missed opportunities, mistakes, and poor composure. In short, these contests against New York really do seem to have come down to the advantage earned through experience, as the Knicks consistently exhibited an ability to outperform San Antonio at the most critical times.

Despite it’s disappointing ending, we would be remiss to overlook how amazing this season has been. Back in October, the Spurs were expected to be a fringe playoff team that would be thrilled to get past the play-in and go down fighting in the first round. Instead, they won 62 games and marched through a series of tough Western Conference opponents. Replicating that feat next year won’t be easy, but the core of this team is still well within the age range in which substantial year-over-year improvements are the norm, so we have every reason to believe that next year’s squad will be even more impressive. In the meantime, let’s review our last box score of the season:

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Note: Now that we’ve moved into the postseason, the reference period used for grading changes from the set of regular season games since 2012-2013 to the set of postseason games since 2012-2013. Unless otherwise noted below, this set DOES include play-in games. As of the end of June 13 2026, this group include 1,206 games.

Factors that decided the game

This was yet another game in which many key battles were essentially draws. For example, New York edged out the Spurs in defensive rebounds (+2), but San Antonio had a +1 edge on the offensive glass. Similarly, the Knicks had one more turnover than the Spurs, but San Antonio’s edge in points off of turnovers was just +3 (certainly an advantage, but unlikely to swing a game).

Shooting volume and efficiency from the field was similarly balanced. The Spurs did have a key edge in overall FG% (+2.74 percentage…

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Publish date : 2026-06-14 21:40:00

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