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2026 NBA Finals, Game 2
I Am a Rock - The 2025-26 San Antonio Spurs have made a lot of history during this magical journey that has taken us from thirteenth place in the West last season to Western Conference Champions and playing in The Finals right now. On Friday night, we squandered a second consecutive opportunity to end New York’s double-digit playoff winning streak losing Game 2 to the Knicks in heartbreaking-fashion 105-104 at Frost Bank Center. If you’re reading this you already know what went spectacularly wrong (by our own making) at the end of Game 2 and as a result of our inexplicable loss of composure in the biggest moment of the season so far, we are down 0-2 and now face our biggest series deficit of this entire postseason. Now, in order to redeem what is (in it’s immediate aftermath) one of our four most gut-wrenching playoff defeats of all-time (and get Friday’s loss erased from that infamous list), we are now going to have to make some more history by becoming the first team to win a championship after dropping the first two games of the NBA Finals at home. (If you’re curious about the other three most gut-wrenching playoff defeats in Spurs history they are: 1) “The Ray Allen shot” in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals against the Miami Heat 2) “Manu Fouls Dirk” in Game 7 of the 2006 Western Conference Semifinals against the Dallas Mavericks 3) “Point Four” in Game 5 of the 2004 Western Conference Semifinals against the Los Angeles Lakers.) I remain steadfast in my conviction that coming back to win this series after blowing the first two Danes at home is exactly what we are about to do. We have no choice. It cannot be written in the annals of league history that the New York Knicks were the best team in the year of our basketball gods 2026 because it’s simply not the case. Give Jalen Brunson credit, he has made clutch shots down the stretch in both games in San Antonio which has allowed the Knicks to earn this 2-0 series lead + three opportunities at home to get the two remaining wins they need to secure the title. That being said, neither of these games would have been close enough for Brunson’s clutch shooting to be decisive if we hadn’t been consistently beating ourselves for too many of the minutes leading up to crunch time in both games. We should have won both of those games by double digits. The only reason why we didn’t is because our collective youth has still not fully adjusted to the pressure of playing on this stage. Our collective youth is yet to shake loose from its Finals jitters. Obviously, part of being the best team in the league is having more composure on basketball’s biggest stage than your opponent and the more experienced Knicks have outperformed us in that regard by a wide margin during the first two games. If they continue to outperform us in having more composure on the Finals stage, they will indeed win this series and if that were to happen, I will tip my cap and acquiesce that the New York Knicks were the best team in 2025-26. But we aren’t even close to that scenario becoming reality. This is not a series that feels like one team is heading home for a coronation. This feels like a series where the other team has taken some tough home losses but is finally getting comfortable on this stage and is on the verge of figuring out the first team and figuring them out for good.
The Spurs have won at least one of the first two road games in every series so far this postseason. If we can keep that streak going for a fourth consecutive series, I like our chances to flip the composure edge the deeper this series gets. New York hasn’t played under any real pressure since the first week of the postseason back in April. We’ve been swimming in pressure for over a month. Anyone who believes it’s a foregone conclusion that just because the Knicks were able to get both of the first two games in our building they are going to sweep us now that they will have home court advantage for the next two in Madison Square Garden is severely underestimating our ability to perform under pressure on the road. We have proven for seven weeks now that we have a resilience as a group and hostile road environment have not been a barrier to us reaching our highest possible level of play, a level that I have yet to see evidence that our Finals opponent is capable of matching. If I am correct and the Spurs are finally comfortable on the Finals stage and I’m also correct we have figured some things out about how play New York, it doesn’t matter how much the Big Apple wants to celebrate in the world’s most famous arena this week, the Knicks are going to have to come back to San Antonio on Saturday with more work to do and while experiencing pressure for the first time since late April after going down 2-1 in the first round to the Atlanta Hawks. Give them credit, winning 13 playoff games in a row means you don’t have to face adversity but it also means it’s that much more unpredictable how you will respond when you finally end up facing some. The Knicks have been riding this incredible wave of momentum and good vibes that has them projecting as world beaters but keep in mind, they were a very erratic team over the course of the season. New York had a stretch in January where they went 2-8. It may only take the simple act of the Spurs winning one road game to snap New York’s winning streak and the Knick’s unfamiliarity with experiencing adversity could unleash the Mr. Hyde undisciplined, disconnected, uninspired version of this team (you know, the version of the team that lost to the lowly Dallas Mavericks 114-97 at home on January 19th) that deep down, every Knicks fan knows is still inside their shiny seemingly infallible Dr. Jekyll.
On thing is for sure, if the Knick’s 13-game winning streak has in any way been the result of the basketball gods bestowing good karma on the city that never sleeps, that is reportedly about to come to a screeching halt in Game 3 due to the expected attendance in Madison Square Garden of Knick’s fan Donald Trump. If he does attend, it should be assumed that all of the momentum the president’s favorite basketball team has been riding for the past seven weeks is about to dry up faster than one of his single (and ready to mingle) supporter’s Tinder matches as soon as they make the mistake of adding “maga” to the bio on their profile. An NBA franchise cannot both invite a would-be authoritarian ruler (who is hellbent on eviscerating 250 years of American democracy for his own personal glory and enrichment) to be a guest in their arena so he can cheer on their team and also continue currying favor with the basketball gods. The two things are mutually exclusive. It’s gonna be some sweet poetic justice to watch the gods’ disapproving wrath for the Knick’s decision to host a tyrant rain down on the Big Apple from the basketball heavens like Zeus unloading thunderbolts during the Titanomachy. New York City is about to find out how much damage the “Trump Effect” can have in the basketball deity polls and the court of karmic opinion. When you add on top of it the additional bad karma the Knicks will receive from the record-setting astronomical prices fans are being asked to pay for tickets to attend the first NBA Finals games in Madison Square Garden this millennium—prices that are precluding most real fans from attending the event and rendering entry to these games to be a golden goose accessible only to the rich and famous celebrity bourgeoisie and elbow-rubbing corporate elites or in other words, ensuring that the unfettered late stage racial capitalism of Trump’s America is working spectacularly well at only benefiting those who it is intended to benefit, New York’s karma goose is cooked. When asked by White House correspondents on Air Force One about everyday Americans being priced out of purchasing tickets for Games 3 & 4 this week in Madison Square Garden, our (somehow) sitting president said, “They can watch it on television. It's sort of semi-free to watch it on television, but that's the way life goes. Now if the game wasn't a big, if the team wasn't a big success, you could go very easily. But that's the way life is." What an out-of-touch and heartless comment by a spoiled-rotten despicable excuse for a human being. To make matters worse, Trump’s insistence on making himself a part of the story for the most captivating Finals matchup this decade placed further undue burden on the proletariat by forcing the cancellation of the real Knicks fan’s outdoor MSG watch party due to it being logistically infeasible to accommodate both that and the Secret Service security protocol to get the sitting POTUS in and out of the building. This man’s utter lack of concern for the welfare of the hardworking American people knows no bounds. It is now the duty of every patriotic American to root for the San Antonio Spurs to rally and help ensure that this would-be despot and his fellow elitist Knicks fans experience soul crushing disappointment in the next two weeks. (I guess for Donald himself, it would just be regular disappointment since he has no soul to be crushed but it will be satisfying nonetheless). If you believe in the restoration of democracy and that there should be no kings in America, it is your duty to join the national proletariat in making “Go Spurs Go” ring from sea to shining sea so forcefully it pleases the basketball gods and spurs them (pun intended) to manifest a colossal karmic storm to be unleashed down on Gotham for the next few days in the form of an epic series-evening comeback by the visitors that spoils their party and rains on their parade. Even for those in the Knicks-repping conflicted NYC proletariat, there is still time to put your country first as well as stand in solidarity with the working class (not to mention stick it to the president personally for cancelling your watch party). There’s plenty of room still over here on the right side of history. The New York Knicks are the party of Donald Trump, filthy-rich celebrities and the oligarchs. The San Antonio Spurs are for the people. And Victor Wembanyama is for the children.
Speaking of Wemby, I won’t lie. Watching him make such a massive mistake on Friday night at such a critical moment with the entire world watching was agonizing. I literally shed tears of sadness in reaction to a Spurs loss for the first time since the Ray Allen shot in 2013. Attempting to recover this weekend from the disappointment of climbing all the way back from 14 down in the final six minutes of the game (an extraordinary comeback fueled by player of the game De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell, Dylan Harper, and Wemby himself) only to squander it away in the end because of Victor’s ill-timed calamitous error (an error with the potential to be immortalized in infamy for the rest of time in the annals of basketball history) has been emotionally challenging. The extra travel day off to sit with it between games hasn’t helped. Objectively, when I ruminate on the basketball that has been played so far in this series, our situation being in an 0-2 hole is concerning but at the same time, all of the evidence points to us being up against an opponent we can easily handle by just regressing back to the mean with our level of play. We have had crunch time leads in both games after playing some of our worst basketball of the season. Meanwhile, it has taken consistent shot-making under duress (often with the shot clock about to expire) just for New York to force two 50-50 games and even then, it still took clutch shots by Brunson at the end of both games to punish us for our struggles to the tune of two home losses in a series that could easily be 2-0 the other direction and with all things being equal would most likely be tied 1-1. Objectively, I know we are more than capable of walking this thing down and we have proven for this entire playoff run that we have the ability to dig deep to find what we need in order to play our best when our backs are against the wall. I think what has made recovering from our Game 2 loss this weekend so emotional is knowing how costly it can prove to be to throw away a Finals game like that combined with the historical weight of now having to become the first team to ever comeback from losing the first two Finals games at home combined with what a blemish that turnover could prove to be on Wemby’s legacy. It has been a lot to process. The good news is if we come out focused tonight and play our brand of basketball the right way, we will take the first of four steps towards erasing all of this heaviness and replacing it with the sheer joy associated with the realization of what has admittedly become (here on the Monday afternoon before Game 3 as we’re veering up from this 0-2 series hole) a distant and improbable dream. All of the pressure is now squarely on the New York Knicks not to choke this series away. They are expected to win this thing now, especially by their delirious fan base. The #BlackAndSilver have the opportunity to play pressure-free basketball in Games 3 & 4 in the world’s most famous arena and see what happens. Victor Wembanyama, specifically, has the opportunity to make lemonade from the lemons of his massive mistake by asserting himself as the best player in the series moving forward. As I stated earlier, the calamitous error has the potential to to be immortalized in infamy for the rest of time in the annals of basketball history and provide a permanent blemish on Wemby’s legacy but the key word is “potential,” it is not yet set it stone. It also has the potential to be a remarkable part of the origin story for how he became the greatest basketball player of all-time, a seemingly unrecoverable self-inflicted bout with adversity that he accepted as a teaching moment, learned from immediately and persevered through to capture his first NBA championship during his first trip to the playoffs in defiance of the sizable odds and the weight executing a comeback which has no precedent in history. The circumstances over the past six days that have brought us to this moment in time where our dream of winning this series is now distant and improbable are now in the past and we can’t change them, for better or worse. But to give my perspective as an eternal optimist, the distance and improbability stands to provide so much depth and enrichment to the realization of this dream and make it substantially more rewarding. In the end, isn’t it the distance and improbability that makes the fulfillment of every child’s hoop dreams so rewarding from the moment they first touch a basketball? The headline image for this post is a photo of me holding a basketball in a shooting position as a two-year-old while looking up at the distance and improbability of making the attempt on a 10-foot regulation basket and defiantly dreaming that I can make it (circa 1980). I stuck with it throughout my childhood and eventually got to the point where I could realize my two-year-old self’s original hoop dream very easily as well as realizing many other hoop dreams that came after throughout my basketball journey (see photo circa 1995 below). While now distant and improbable, Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs still have an opportunity in front of us to realize one of the most sacred of all hoop dreams that every child has at some point soon after they first touch a basketball. I know, starting tonight, we are going to apply the lessons provided by the adversity we have faced so far in these Finals and use them to help us stare down that distance and improbability and defiantly dream on.
#GoSpursGo
Featured Image Source: MSN