Knicks-Spurs matchups have become must-see television.
It seems every time the two teams square up recently, there is significant drama.
They meet Sunday at Madison Square Garden for the third and final time this regular season.
“I heard about the Christmas game last year,” Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox said after practice Saturday. “I felt like there was probably a little something there. First time we saw them [this year] was the championship of a tournament. That’ll help you find a reason to, not necessarily dislike somebody, but you’re playing for a little bit more.”
The Knicks beat the Spurs in a thriller to win the NBA Cup back in December.
It came via a huge fourth-quarter turnaround, during which the Knicks outscored the Spurs by 16. That has been the peak of the Knicks’ season, by far.
But the two teams have largely taken different trajectories since that moment.
They met just over two weeks later in San Antonio on New Year’s Eve, and the Knicks blew a double-digit lead en route to a gutting loss that changed the course of their season. From their Cup triumph through the first three quarters of that second Spurs matchup, they looked like the best team in the East and a bona fide contender.
But since the fourth quarter of that second matchup, they’ve dragged their feet and mostly looked like pretenders. That loss began a stretch in which the Knicks lost 9 of 11 games.
Knicks coach Mike Brown was harsh on his team afterward.
“They just, s–t, excuse my French, but they just outworked us in a lot of ways,” Brown said after the game. “[Spurs coach Mitch Johnson] kicked my ass. The rest of the team kicked our ass. We all got our ass kicked today.
“First of all, our physicality wasn’t good. We haven’t figured out how to be physical for 48 minutes in the last I don’t know how many games. And doing it without fouling. We pick up some silly fouls that we have to do a better job of. I feel everybody understands that. But now we have to go do it. So now our physicality isn’t good. And we just haven’t been able to — I don’t know if we’re tired or what, we haven’t been able to sustain anything defensively for 48 minutes. And we’ve won a lot of games and you want to win games and feel good about it. But at the end of the day, if we don’t figure out how we’re going to sustain what we’re supposed to do on defense for 48 minutes, it’s going to be a long year for us and it’s going to catch up with us.”
Everything Brown said after that game was prescient — particularly that last part predicting that their lingering problems, especially on the defensive end, would eventually catch up with them.
In 2026, the Knicks have so far recorded a 15-12 record. The Spurs have gone 19-7 and are riding an 11-game winning streak. Fox believes their Cup experience, despite falling short to the Knicks in the final, sparked it.
“For us, just being able to be around each other playing for something a little bigger than a normal regular season game,” Fox said, “I definitely think that helps.”
Last year on Christmas, Mikal Bridges scored 41 points — his most with the Knicks — as the Knicks overcame Victor Wembanyama’s 42-point outburst in a heart-stopping three-point win.
A year prior, Jalen Brunson and Wembanyama had an epic duel — Brunson scored a career-high 61 points while Wemanyama recorded 40 points, 20 rebounds, seven assists and two steals as the Knicks lost by four in overtime.
Something about this matchup keeps delivering memorable showdowns.
“It’s a great team,” Wembanyama said previously of the Knicks. “One of the teams I looked up to as a kid, which has a lot of history. So it’s always interesting. Going to New York, as well, is always fun.”
Sunday’s clash will be the first this season at MSG. Buckle in for more fun.
— Additional reporting by Zach Braziller
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
