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The San Antonio Spurs lost the 2026 NBA Finals to the New York Knicks in five games, but the series felt so much closer.
While the Knicks hoisted their first Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy since 1973, the Spurs are left holding onto generational what-ifs. , the Spurs' +173 is the playoff point differential for a team that did not win the championship.
The Spurs held a double-digit lead in every game of this series, but they inexplicably collapsed down the stretch in four of five games. , the Knicks now own the Nos. 1, 4, and 6 largest comebacks in NBA Finals history. The biggest came when the Knicks erased a 29-point deficit to win Game 4 at Madison Square Garden on June 10.
"One of many things I learned is the margin of error is very, very thin," Spurs star and NBA Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyamaafter losing Game 5. "Our domination stints are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of this series, but our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard. We can't have ups and downs like this.
The ups are OK, the downs the reason we lost.
" "What I'm pissed about is that there's probably 100 games before we can be back in the Finals," Wembanyama said separately. "So, I don't know how to say it in English, but I'm going to have to hold that inside of me and slow down, wait, and execute for 100 games.
" The silver lining in San Antonio is that the 2013 Spurs' +147 is the second-highest playoff point differential for a team that didn't win the title, and the Spurs came back stronger the following season to win the 2014 NBA Finals. The way-too-early 2027 NBA Finals odds have the Spurs as a slight favorite, per
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