SAN ANTONIO — The Spurs were supposed to be different. A 62-win Western Conference juggernaut built upon the shoulders of a 7-4 basketball-playing alien named Victor Wembanyama was projected to give the untested Knicks a reality check on the NBA’s biggest stage. There’s no way the Knicks, who ran through the Eastern Conference playoff picture via an almost unprecedented 11-game postseason winning streak, were going to do the same to the best of the West — the team that dethroned two-time league Most Valuable Player of the Year Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference finals.

Because the Spurs had something the Knicks hadn’t seen yet this playoff run: real talent, real depth, real ball pressure at the point of attack. This wasn’t James Harden and Donovan Mitchell off consecutive Game 7s. It wasn’t Joel Embiid on one day’s rest just weeks removed from an appendectomy. It wasn’t a 36-year-old C.J. McCollum with a first-time All-Star Jalen Johnson.

It was a Spurs franchise with rich championship history, a stud head coach in Mitch Johnson, the future of basketball in Wembanyama and a supporting cast so inexperienced it didn’t know any better. A Spurs team that would surely send the Knicks soul searching after more than a month without a loss.

Or not.

The Spurs are just like the Hawks, Sixers and Cavaliers — victims of the Knicks. In fact, they are carbon copies of the opponents the Knicks swept through the final two rounds of the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Because the broomsticks are back out, and they’re waiting at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks defeated the Spurs, 105-104, in dramatic fashion to take a commanding 2-0 series lead in the 2026 NBA Finals — and the next two games are back at home, in front of the rowdiest, most passionate fan base in all of professional sports.

Which means the Knicks are not coming back to San Antonio. The Garden of Nightmares awaits a team that couldn’t string together wins in front of its own home crowd.

It was a reality check the San Antonio faithful felt in real-time once again, after the Spurs took a double-digit first-quarter lead, only to watch it evaporate possession by possession in the second quarter, as the Knicks took a four-point lead into halftime, then watched Jalen Brunson dribble into a pull-up 3 to put the Knicks up 10 with 9:20 left in the third quarter. “Let’s go Knicks!” chants pierced through the deafening silence befalling the Frost Bank Center, another hostile takeover of a road arena — first Atlanta, then Philadelphia, then Cleveland, now here.

And now, NBA history is even more on the Knicks side. Teams that have taken a 2-0 series lead in the NBA Finals have gone on to win the series 32 out of 37 times, a whopping 86.5% margin favoring the team now returning to its own home crowd. Thanks to questionable officiating in a must-win game, the Spurs had 10 lives — but the Knicks killed them 11 times.

And now, the Spurs know how the Hawks, Sixers and Cavaliers felt. They know how it feels to throw their best punch, only to be on the receiving end of a flurry of haymakers shortly after. They know how it feels to have their own home arena turned inside-out by the most well-traveled fan base in all of sports.

They know how it feels to be victimized by the New York Knicks, who aren’t coming back to South Texas.

The Knicks are wrapping this up at home in what will soon be remembered as one of the most dominant playoff runs in all of sports history.

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