On the road in San Antonio, the New York Knicks ended their 50-plus year drought to win the 2025-26 NBA championship.
While the 4-1 scoreline will in the future make it look like New York dominated the San Antonio Spurs in the final round of the playoffs, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. San Antonio had sizeable leads in almost every single game of the NBA Finals and once again squandered a double-digit lead to succumb to the Knicks on Saturday night.
So, in every autopsy of a team eliminated, what went wrong?
I might not be a doctor, but here are my three main reasons why the Spurs couldn’t get it done against the Knicks.
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Inexperience
This team, for a lack of a better word, was immature in the NBA Finals. When they got leads, they had no idea how to close out a game. In the final minutes of the game, clutch time, the Spurs juggled between mindless and arrogance. From missed passes, to poor decision making, to just not making the shots when needed, San Antonio couldn’t close out a game to save their life this series.
And it wasn’t only the players who looked out of their depth.
Mitch Johnson
When you have a youthful team, you look towards the coach to be that calming presence. The person that when things go sideways they can plug up the holes in the ship and make sure the vessel gets to its port. Mitch Johnson did not of that this series.
Every game was a repeat of the last, with the Spurs getting out to an early lead before doing nothing once things stopped working in the second half. He’s only 39 so Johnson, like Victor Wembanyama and the rest of the young Spurs players, will grow from this.
One player, though, might never get a chance to redeem himself in San Antonio.
De’Aaron Fox
I’m going to be very clear on this subject: If De’Aaron Fox played below average these NBA Finals, the Spurs win, even with Johnson’s rigid coaching and the team’s immaturity.
That’s how bad the almost decade veteran was in this series.
He was unfathomably bad.
In Game 4, if Fox simply held onto the ball in the final seconds instead of going for a layup that got blocked, the Spurs almost assuredly win and go back to San Antonio tied. And on Saturday, in his chance to change the narrative, he shot 3-15 from the field and continually tried to play hero in the final minutes of the game, missing every shot he took.
The worst part of this for the Spurs is that they have two incredible young guards in Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, while Fox is set to be paid $50 million for the next four years. A contract, that even with picks attached to it, seems impossible to move this offseason after his abysmal performance throughout the playoffs.
Fox played like he wanted to be the Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, or LeBron James of an NBA title-winning squad.
Instead, he played like a fan who ran onto the court and chucked up a shot that bounced off a guy’s head in the third row.