SAN ANTONIO — The Spurs know the feeling all too well — a feeling the Knicks want to avoid if they’re going to close-out the 2026 NBA Finals on the road and clinch the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973 in Game 5 at Frost Bank Center on Saturday.

The Spurs are only weeks removed from their most emotional victory of the year: Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals against the dethroned NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder. In the blink of an eye, the Spurs, who were down in that series 3-2, went from a six-year playoff drought to the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance since 2014. Four days later, the Knicks served them a huge wedge of humble pie: A 10-point victory to open the Finals by stealing home-court advantage, followed by a one-point victory to push themselves up 2-0, the kind of deficit only five teams in Finals history have ever overcome.

Now it’s the Knicks who must stay level-headed and even-keeled following one of the greatest performances in the franchise’s existence: The Knicks erased a 29-point first-half deficit in what could live on forever as the largest comeback in NBA Finals history and won on a late tip-in by OG Anunoby. The Manhattan and Staten Island Borough Presidents have already declared June 11 “OG Anunoby Appreciation Day.”

But the job is not finished. There is at least one more game to be played. And as good as the Knicks have been in closeout games this season, a victory on Saturday is far from guaranteed.

Especially if the Knicks play another game of unnecessary catch-up and rely on the Spurs to fall apart down the stretch once again.

“Obviously that game is a hardwood classic, something that the NBA has never seen before. But I’ve also seen things, being in that situation, where the joy is at an all-time high and it could be at an all-time low pretty quick. So we understand the magnitude of locking back in, getting back to work,” Karl-Anthony Towns said before practice at Frost Bank Center on Friday. “That night we all enjoyed the shell shock of what happened … but we all understood the next morning that we had to get back to work, and we had to lock back in and get ready to find a way to win another one. Also, in that moment of jubilation, that moment of absolute joy, we had to talk about the elephant in the room.

“We just didn’t play well at all, and we put ourselves in that deficit.”

Closeout games

Fifty-one. Thirty. Thirty-seven against the Cleveland Cavaliers was predictable. The Knicks haven’t just closed-out opponents at first chance. They’ve embarrassed each of their playoff opponents in elimination situations.

“We understand anytime you try to play a closeout game, the level of desperation for your opponents increases, the level of desperation for the fans of your opponents is increased,” head coach Mike Brown said before practice on Friday. “You have to bring your best effort because even if you bring your best effort, it may not happen, especially on the road. That’s the only way you have a chance for it to happen.”

The circumstances surrounding the Spurs are different — because the Spurs, rightfully so, believe they can win. They’ve led by double digits in each of the first four games of the Finals. Only once have they held on to win a game.

“Everybody thinks, everybody knows, we’re going to [come back from down 3-1],” Victor Wembanyama said. “I feel like we need to isolate [the next] game and take it one game at a time. I think it would be a mistake to waste our energy on multiple games. It’s one game at a time.”

The numbers favor the Knicks: They are undefeated in elimination games. They’ve won by an obscene average of 39.3 points. They swept two straight opponents and won 11 straight games before they threatened the sweep after going up 2-0 on the Spurs on the road.

The Knicks also know they can’t continue their troubling trend of punting on first quarters and playing catch-up in the second. They are up 3-1 but have lost each of the Finals’ four first quarters by a total of 47 points.

‘We’ve got to make sure we come in focused with a great attention to detail and taking things a possession at a time. We know if we do that and we play our style of basketball, we’re going to put ourselves in a good position to be successful,” said Josh Hart. “But we can’t keep getting into a hole and trying to dig ourselves out of a hole. We were fortunate to do that last game — actually, all three games, all three of our wins — but we’ve got to do a better job of starting games off.”

0-0 mentality

The Knicks don’t believe they are up, 3-1. The series, in their eyes, is tied at 0-0. At least that’s what they say. But in reality, all of Madison Square Garden — players, coaches and fans alike — celebrated the Game 4 victory as if the confetti had fallen for newly crowned NBA champions.

“It is hard. We’re all human,” Brown said. “You win two, three, four, five games in a row, there’s a tendency to relax a little bit.

“San Antonio’s a great team. They’re desperate. I still think they believe. It’s going to be hard for us. But it’s natural for that to creep in a little bit. You just hope that it doesn’t creep in too long throughout the course of the game.”

It helps the Knicks that Game 4 wasn’t a blowout victory in their favor. No. The Knicks should have lost that game. They were down 29 points and pounced on a Spurs team that took their foot off the gas. Sure they came back. Sure they went up 3-1. But there’s tons of film to review of all the bad they did to dig themselves the hole in the first place.

“I’ve always told myself when you wake up the next day, it’s time to turn the page. Yes, we won, but we still have a lot of work to do. We have a lot to learn,” Jalen Brunson said. “We didn’t play our best basketball. We still have a lot to revisit to make sure that we don’t really put ourselves in that position again.”

It also helps that the Knicks don’t drink their own Kool Aid. This team isn’t quite smelling itself just yet — because it knows how quickly things can turn once you do. They are letting the fans enjoy the success, but the players inside the locker room know the work is far from complete. The next victory will be the most difficult game this team has ever played.

“We know our job’s not finished,” Mikal Bridges said. “We’re ready.”

They’ve been ready for the moment every time the moment has called in their 2026 title push. One more win will immortalize this Knicks team as one of the best to ever do it. One more win will take everything the Knicks have in their tanks — and more.

“We’ve got to approach every game like it’s 0-0. We’ve got to have that kind of desperation that it is to win Game 1 of a playoff series. We’ve got to go in there with the understanding of no comfortability, just really be desperate, execute at a high level. Game plan discipline has to be at a high level,” Towns said. “I’ve said this multiple times, the hardest game to win is the one that ends someone’s season. So we’ve got to be our best version tomorrow.”

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