“Everyone’s Pretty Excited”

“Everybody stayed.”

After the fact, once we’d escaped the throngs of the initial wave down one avenue, and eventually to another, it was a pointed observation about the bar on 40th Street where we’d taken in the entire occasion. When it looked in doubt, New York Knicks fans retreated to scornful, Costanza-esque chuckles and the related feeling of having been kicked in the head while retaining no visible bruises.

But all of those fans stayed to watch the second half. After everything so far in this playoff run, it seemed fair. Sometimes, the celestial reward arrives. Better yet: sometimes the celestial reward arrives in the form of a huge fan of scarves, Anne Hathaway and Olympic gymnastics.

Taking advantage of a momentarily-paralyzed San Antonio Spurs backline, OG Anunoby floated down the lane and, more quickly than the eyes nor camera could capture, tipped in a Jalen Brunson missed three to put the Knicks up one. Thanks to Anunoby et al., there is now a basketball Hand Of God – Pope Leo notably having gone to Villanova – and it was perfectly legal. One Karl-Anthony Towns-led defensive stop later, and the Knicks of New York are up in the NBA Finals, 3-1.

From a first half that looked like karmic and schematic retribution for having beaten up on the would-be minnows of the Eastern Conference to the greatest comeback in NBA postseason history – in Game 4 of the FINALS – everyone who’d been in the bar at tipoff stuck around.

After De’Aaron Fox tried, and failed, to outrun OG Anunoby on what would almost certainly have been a game-sealing layup, the latter blocked the former’s shot. Down one, the New York Knicks would have one more possession. With it, Jalen Brunson launched a three over Victor Wembanyama in what would’ve surely been the bangest BANG Mike Breen ever let out. Instead, the shot pulled short, and Anunoby ran in uninhibited for the most vital tip-in in NBA history, or at least in Knicks franchise history.

I am delirious: New York now heads back to Texas, the Knicks leading the San Antonio Spurs 3-1 in the NBA Finals.

With the Knicks down 27 at halftime, the lead having stretched at most to 71-42 mere minutes prior, a resigned patronage, adorned in blue and orange, could only laugh. Of course San Antonio was going to tie the series. Maybe this was the Spurs’ last great gasp, or maybe it was the beginning of the turnaround.

“When you do it once, you know you can do it again.” With his typical verbal economy, Anunoby drew the comparison on everyone’s mind in his postgame to Game 1 of the East Finals against Cleveland. Chipping away, little by little, led to the breakthrough, to overtime, to the eventual rest.

Even with that in mind, already having overcome a 20-point fourth quarter deficit to win, it remained surreal to watch New York claw all the way back. Amidst a flurry of early-possession threes from San Antonio, most of which clanked off the rim, the Knicks charged the floor and sowed a seed of doubt. The rest was photosynthesis.

Following an absolutely egregious lapse in reality only shortly before, in which he neither dunked nor laid up a wide open bucket in transition, Josh Hart blew the coverage on Stephon Castle on the very last play of the game. But for both of Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns, who tipped the inbound pass that otherwise would’ve found Castle for an open layup that would have put the Knicks up one with under two minutes remaining, Hart would be, right now, calling in from an undisclosed location near one of Charles Smith’s relatives.

Both are correct: Wemby, Fox and the San Antonio Spurs gave the game away, and the New York Knicks seized the opportunity gratuitously splaying out before them. The Spurs did their part in playing lackadaisically (and, if we’re being honest, visibly laboriously) in the second half, during which they only scored 30 points, and the Knicks stuck a pinky in the closing door in order to shed some light on the masses. Everybody stayed.