Down 29 at the Garden.

I Still Don't Know What I Just Watched.

By Sergio Rodriguez

I'm sitting here and I don't know what to think. I genuinely don't know what I just saw. But I know why I didn't turn it off. Because I've watched this team do it too many times this playoffs to ever count them out. And somehow, some way, they did it again.

The Knicks were down 29 points at home in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. They were down 27 at the half. And they won, 107-106. That is the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history. The old record was 21 points, set in 1948. This team didn't just break it. They buried it.

And here's the stat that's going to live in my head forever: the Knicks' largest lead of the entire game was one point. One. They led for a grand total of seconds, and they were the right seconds.

The Knicks came into this one bouncing back from the Game 3 loss, with all the off-court noise swirling around them. The watch party drama, the presidential visit, the officiating complaints, all of it. And honestly, none of that should matter when you're a focused professional in the playoffs. But the Spurs still came to play, and they did what they had to do.

They came out red hot. It felt like they could not miss. KAT picked up two fouls in the first 65 seconds and the Spurs jumped out 12-2 before the Garden could even settle in. They dropped 41 in the first quarter alone, shooting 65 percent with six threes. By halftime it was 76-49 and they had hit 14 threes, a Finals record for a half. Devin Vassell was a perfect 5-of-5. Dylan Harper looked like he'd been here ten years, 6-of-7 from the floor on his way to 21. Wemby had 16 at the break.

Watching it, I had this sick feeling of recognition. This was what the Knicks had been doing to teams the last couple of series. This was domination. Except now we were on the wrong end of it, in our building, and the Garden was the quietest I've heard it in months.

I really thought the Knicks had to win Game 4. I just never expected it to happen like this.

Read that again. After dropping 76 in the first half, San Antonio scored 14 in the third quarter and 16 in the fourth. Thirty points in 24 minutes of basketball. They went 4-of-20 in the third, including 0-of-5 in the paint, and had more turnovers than made field goals in the frame. Then 4-of-19 in the fourth. The team that couldn't miss suddenly couldn't buy a bucket, and the Knicks defense that got torched for two quarters locked all the way in.

The comeback wasn't one big run. It was chipping. A 10-0 run here. A 13-2 run there. A 20-4 stretch in the fourth that cut a 24-point lead down to four. The Knicks outscored the Spurs 26-14 in the third and 32-16 in the fourth. Every time San Antonio called timeout to stop the bleeding, New York just started a new cut.

This is what we have in Jalen Brunson. When this team's back is against the wall, he puts the pressure on. He doesn't force one hero shot and call it a night. He chips away. Two points here. Three points there. Always probing, always trying to make something happen. There is no quit in this man.

He finished with 36 points on 12-of-25, went 9-of-11 from the line, added 7 assists, and played 44 minutes. He had 19 at the half when nothing else was working, kept the team breathing in the third, and when the moment got big, he got bigger. That three over Wemby with about two minutes left to cut it to one, with a 7'5" arm in his face, that's a shot you take when you are not scared of anything. Then the impossible floater with the shot clock dying to take the lead at 105-104. He's sitting in the driver's seat for Finals MVP right now.

Mike Brown deserves real credit too. The adjustment that changed the game was putting two ball handlers out there together, running Alvarado next to Brunson. Two guys who can handle it, two guys who can push. It sped the game up when the Knicks desperately needed to score in bunches, and it took pressure off Brunson having to create every single possession. It worked. Alvarado gave them 8 points in 16 minutes, hit 2-of-3 from deep including a dagger with Wemby flying at him, and finished +11. Sixteen of the loudest minutes of the season.

Real talk before I get into the numbers. I was at work before I came home to watch this game, and I told one of my coworkers: you know who I want to have a big game tonight? OG. He is a dawg. I think he's gonna come up big. Did I know something? No. But I know how good he is. I know how much heart he has. And I know that he is one of those guys who always looks like the moment costs him nothing. Calm. Locked in. Like whatever is happening around him, he already processed it and moved on. That is who OG Anunoby is.

So yeah. I'll take the credit on that one.

The line: 33 points, 10-of-15 from the floor, 7-of-9 from three, 6-of-6 from the line. In the Finals. In a one-point game. Are you serious?

The tip-in is going to be the highlight forever. Brunson misses the three, OG comes flying in from the arc with nobody putting a body on him, and gently pushes it home with 1.2 seconds left. Ball game. Garden explodes.

But the play that's not getting talked about enough is the block before it. Fox gets the ball in the backcourt with 11 seconds left, Spurs up one, shot clock off. All he has to do is dribble it out and force the foul. Instead he goes for the layup, and OG erases it. That block is the entire game. Without it, there is no tip-in. There is no comeback. The one Knick who already has a ring played like the only guy in the building who'd been there before.

And look, that was a bonehead play by Fox. He's one of the veteran leaders on a roster full of young guys. That's exactly the situation where the grown-up dribbles it out. He'll be seeing that one for a long time.

Quick word on the rest of the rotation, because this comeback had fingerprints from everybody. KAT only played 26 minutes thanks to the foul trouble, but his second half was real: 13 points, 10 boards, and a game-high +17. Josh Hart only scored 6 but grabbed 8 rebounds, dished 6 assists, and drew the foul-line pressure all night at +11. And Wemby finished with 24 and 13 with 3 blocks, but it took him 25 shots to get there. The Knicks made him work for every inch of it after halftime.

My resting heart rate sits around the low 50s. During that final sequence it spiked to 114. I checked. The graph looks like the Knicks' fourth quarter. Meanwhile the players on the floor looked like they were flatlined at 50 the whole time. The moment never seemed too big for them. Down 29, in the Finals, and nobody blinked.

The Garden was something else too. Celebrities everywhere having a good time. The building exploding every time the run grew. And here's the thing that gets me: nobody left early. Down 27 at half, every reason in the world to beat the traffic, and they stayed. Then the Wu-Tang Clan played the halftime show and Method Man called Knicks in five on his way off the floor. Maybe he knew something.

This is what I mean when I say the waiting builds up. Fifty-three years of it, and the pressure cooker is finally exploding. I don't fully know how to explain this emotion. I'm confused. I'm elated. I'm all over the place. All I know for certain is that I'm happy, and that I think they're really doing it. At least I hope so. All of this can't be for nothing.

Game 5 is Saturday in San Antonio. Part of me wants them to just end it there. Get it done, don't let this thing breathe. The other part of me wants them to come back home and win it at the Garden in front of this fan base. But after watching what almost happened tonight, I don't want to test fate. Take the first one available.

No matter how this ends, this is a team the fan base will remember forever. But I want them to handle their business and take it all the way.

One more win.