Spurs’ Fourth-Quarter Collapse Turns a Big Lead into a 107-106 Loss to New York

San Antonio’s playoff hopes took a sharp hit after the Spurs watched a comfortable lead evaporate in the final minutes, falling to New York 107-106. The turning point was not simply a late shooting slump, but a collapse that erased a 29-point advantage, including a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter.

According to Yahoo Sports, the scale of the Spurs’ blown advantage was record-setting in a way that nobody wants to own. A 29-point lead disappearing in a live game is rare, and letting it happen against a playoff opponent adds urgency because these are the margin-of-error games that decide home-court, seeding, and series momentum.

The numbers provided in the report frame why the ending carried such weight. San Antonio led by 29 points overall and still led by 20 with time remaining in the fourth quarter. When teams protect a lead at that stage, they usually do it by making the opponent inefficient, limiting turnovers, and maintaining defensive positioning. Instead, the Knicks were able to close with enough pressure and scoring to swing the game to a one-point finish.

The final score underscores how fully the contest flipped. A one-point loss after a dramatic late collapse is especially difficult to digest because it compresses the outcome into a narrow band that can feel both avoidable and hard to explain. In the playoffs, where possessions matter more than in the regular season, late-game execution becomes the difference between control and chaos.

The “Brotherhood” framing used by Yahoo Sports points to the broader playoff storyline connecting the teams, but the immediate lesson is purely basketball. Late-game leads are protected through details: decision-making on drives, shot selection after defensive switches, free-throw pressure, and defensive rebounding. When a team’s offense stops being patient and its defense stops being connected, opponents can turn one run into the next.

For San Antonio, the next questions are practical. Did the Spurs’ shot profile change as the game tightened? Were there defensive breakdowns that created easy scoring in transition? And after a loss defined by blown margins, how does the coaching staff adjust play design so the team can close without surrendering the rhythm that produces 20-point fourth quarters and, just as quickly, a collapse.

For New York, the win is a payoff for staying active late. Even when a team is down by a wide margin, playoff teams often benefit from the opponent’s urgency, shot quality, and defensive scrambling. A comeback of this size suggests the Knicks were not only making shots, but also generating repeatable looks and forcing the Spurs into choices that became more and more costly as time ran out.