With just over 30 seconds left in Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals, New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson grabbed a rebound and advanced into the frontcourt. The San Antonio Spurs led 111-105, so Brunson had to make something happen.
He drove at San Antonio Spurs rookie Dylan Harper enough to send him inside the 3-point line, then stepped back and nailed a 3-pointer to cut New York’s deficit in half. Those were Brunson’s final points and last shot attempt of Game 3.
Brunson finished with a team-high 32 points on 11-of-25 shooting from the field to go with five assists. But this time, unlike Games 1 and 2, the Knicks never completed the comeback. The Spurs scored on three of their final five possessions, holding onto their fourth-quarter lead and earning a 111-105 victory.
As the series shifts to Game 4 on Wednesday, New York has a glaring issue to resolve: How can they stop losing the Brunson minutes?
Through three games of the NBA Finals, the Knicks are up 2-1 and outscoring the Spurs 321-314 overall. Yet, New York has been outscored by 13 points with Brunson on the floor, a notable stat given Brunson’s role as the primary playmaker and shot creator while playing the most minutes among all Knicks (over 110, per NBA.com).
That doesn’t mean Brunson hasn’t delivered in the series, though. In Game 1, he erased San Antonio’s final lead with a second-chance 3-pointer with 1:50 remaining, then scored after a costly Victor Wembanyama turnover in the final minute. In Game 2, Brunson hit a game-tying basket with 39.3 seconds left before capitalizing on another Wembanyama miscue, drawing the foul that led to the go-ahead free throw and the game’s final lead change.
But the larger trend of the series is that New York has repeatedly fallen behind with Brunson directing the offense. The Spurs built first-quarter leads of 10, 10 and 12 points in Games 1 through 3, respectively. In Game 1, the Knicks were outscored by 10 points in Brunson’s opening-quarter minutes. In Games 2 and 3, with Brunson playing all 12 minutes of the first quarter, New York was outscored 34-25 and 33-22. During those first quarters, Brunson has scored just 16 points in 35 minutes while missing 17-of-22 shots (22.7 percent) from the field with four assists and four turnovers.
The Knicks, meanwhile, have managed only 88.0 points per 100 possessions in first quarters compared to 130.9 points per 100 possessions in 12 playoff games against the Eastern Conference. During the regular season, New York ranked fifth in first-quarter offensive efficiency (120.2 points per 100 possessions), its highest output in any period.
Brunson has also struggled to reach the rim when it’s protected by Wembanyama, the Defensive Player of the Year. Brunson has instead settled for attempts inside the 3-point line against bigger defenders such as Stephon Castle, Julian Champagnie, Devin Vassell and Harper. Free throws aren’t a given against a Spurs defense that allowed the NBA’s lowest free-throw attempt rate.
As consistently as the Knicks have struggled to begin games with Brunson pounding the rock, they have eaten up Spurs deficits just as consistently during Brunson’s first trips to the bench. During Brunson’s first rest in Game 1, the Knicks turned a 10-point deficit into a 3-point game. During his first rest in Game 2, the Knicks shaved a nine-point deficit to three. In Brunson’s first rest in Game 3, the Knicks cut an 11-point deficit to four. Those three stretches account for just 15 minutes of basketball, but they are when the Knicks have gotten back into games. The Spurs made just 6 of 22 from the field during those collective spans.
Karl-Anthony Towns has been at the center of those turnarounds. In the 37:30 Towns has been off the floor in the series, New York has been outscored by 24 points.
New York’s best stretch with Brunson of the finals came after San Antonio took a 65-51 lead midway through the third quarter of Game 1. From that point on, Brunson scored 19 points on 7-of-13 shooting, and the Knicks outscored the Spurs by 24 points over the final 18.5 minutes of that game with Brunson on the floor. But even during that surge, Brunson wasn’t carrying the entire offensive burden. Towns, Josh Hart and Miles McBride each bumped up their playmaking as New York generated offense from multiple sources.
That balance has been harder to find since. In Game 2, the Knicks looked close to being on the other side of a blown lead, as San Antonio ripped a 21-5 fourth-quarter run featuring 207 seconds of scoreless basketball by the Knicks over six possessions. The last three of those possessions featured misses by Brunson, including back-to-back missed 3s. Even during New York’s biggest positive stretch of the game, a 26-point swing that turned a 12-point deficit into a 14-point lead, the Knicks outscored the Spurs by 29 points with Towns on the floor.
This is only relevant because the Knicks failed to erase a deficit in Game 3 the way they did in Games 1 and 2. Brunson wasn’t the problem in the fourth quarter, though. New York’s supporting cast was. Players not named Brunson or Anunoby missed 15 of their 16 shots in the final period, with the lone basket coming on a Mitchell Robinson putback of a Brunson miss.
The bigger issue was Brunson’s disastrous third quarter, which put the Knicks in a hole they couldn’t escape. He missed 5-of-7 shots, including his final four attempts of the period, committed three turnovers while recording just a single basket and no assists, and picked up three fouls that all resulted in Spurs free throws. New York entered halftime with a seven-point lead but trailed by three when Brunson went to the bench with 4:29 remaining in the third because of foul trouble — a 10-point swing during his minutes. New York never led again.
The good news for the Knicks is that they own a 2-1 series lead and have another home game ahead. The concern moving forward should be that New York has spent much of the finals trying to survive Brunson’s minutes rather than winning them. That worked in Games 1 and 2. Not so much in Game 3.
If New York wants a more comfortable path to a Game 4 victory, it will likely need a more efficient version of Brunson, one who can impact the game without dominating the ball against one of the NBA’s toughest defenses.
