Knicks Were Down 29 in Game 4. Karl-Anthony Towns Says Experience Saved Them.

When OG Anunoby’s game-winning bucket dropped through the net in Game 4, the New York Knicks didn’t just steal a win — they pulled off the largest comeback in NBA Finals history. Down 29 points with time slipping away, the Knicks flipped a blowout into a 107-106 thriller. And according to Karl-Anthony Towns, the team’s ability to keep its cool came from having been in that exact trap before.

Speaking with Chris Haynes ahead of Game 5 in San Antonio, Towns reflected on what changed after a disastrous first half. The Knicks had been outplayed, outhustled, and looked on the verge of letting the Spurs tie the series. But instead of folding, New York leaned on collective memory.

“We all just wanted to contribute to winning,” Towns said. “And OG with an amazing follow-up on the miss, and a lot of key defensive stops that we made at the end as a team spoke volumes about our team, our camaraderie, our resiliency, the grit.”

The Knicks Have Been Here Before

Towns pointed to two recent examples that shaped the team’s response: last year’s road win in Boston, and Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Cleveland, where the Knicks erased a 22-point deficit. In both cases, New York refused to let go of the rope.

“We had every chance in the book to let go of the rope, but experience kicked in,” Towns added. “We knew we just had to put ourselves in a position to win and give ourselves a chance.”

The Knicks’ ability to manufacture those chances came down to stingy closing defense and Anunoby crashing the glass on a missed three-pointer. The sequence may look like luck to outsiders, but Towns insists it was the product of a team refusing to panic.

Same Roster, New Urgency

Towns also acknowledged that the Knicks dug themselves an unnecessary hole. “We didn’t play to our standards, we didn’t play Knicks basketball,” he said. “In the second half, regardless of how that game was going to end, we needed to show our best version, so that we could know going into the next game, we showed the best version of ourselves.”

The challenge now: finishing the job. New York heads into Game 5 on Saturday night with a chance to clinch the franchise’s first championship since 1973. If their star big man’s comments are any indication, the Knicks aren’t just riding momentum — they’re trusting the road they’ve already traveled.