Towns Was Supposed To Get The Ball At The End Of Game 4 And Other Knicks Tidbits

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 10: Karl-Anthony Towns #32 of the New York Knicks celebrates after his team's 107-106 victory against the San Antonio Spurs in Game Four of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden on June 10, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Much is revealed when a team is finally able to cross the finish line in 1st place. The chats with the media become more lax and the news starts to leak out about what was really going on behind the scenes.

There have been a few stories that have been revealed over the last two months that help shine a light on a play, a game, a series or even how a player was feeling. Here are a list of the tidbits you may have missed from the New York Knicks run to a championship:

Towns was asked about the miraculous game-winning shot from OG Anunoby in Game 4 of the NBA Finals:

“I was going to dunk it. I seen an OG flying in the sky and I'm like, ‘All right, well, if he tries to tip the ball back in and it goes long and it goes off the front rim, I'm going to dunk it back in.’ OG made it. It was something special. You know, the play was designed to go to me and then two people guarded me, the inbounder and the person defending me.”

The account from Towns does check out. No other player has corroborated his comment that the play was originally designed to go to him, but it wouldn’t be surprising for a couple of different reasons. Jalen Brunson has Victor Wembanyama guarding him on the perimeter while Towns is being guarded by a smaller defender in Devin Vassell. It is a far easier task to beat a player like Vassell, even though Towns has occasionally had issues taking advantage of forwards. Regardless, De’Aaron Fox opted to guard the big man rather than the inbounder which made it nearly impossible to get the ball to Towns.

Would he have been able to stuff the ball into the basket had Anunoby missed the shot? Maybe. But for Knicks fans it may be more enjoyable to sit in the reality of what happened.

Shamet was asked about his preparation as a shooter:

“Game 3 was so weird for me because I’m in New York, but it was not my home routine. I eat at 4 p.m. and my hour and a half nap prior to that…I’m going to the Garden on a bus? I don’t do that. I gotta go at this time? This isn’t when I go… And honestly that added to some of the anxiety…I think there was some advantage to being the road team in these NBA Finals.”

The media frenzy was on another level for this series, but specifically Game 3 when President Donald Trump attended the game. Shamet doesn’t use it as an excuse, but there are plenty of signs that indicate that they were a bit off. They had two ugly turnovers in the first two minutes of the game and were down 11 points entering the 2nd quarter.

The road team in this series did quite well, and almost went undefeated. This is the first time since 2019 that the road team won four or more games in the NBA Finals. We’ll see if this is a trend that will continue moving forward.

McBride was asked about the difficulty of the timing of his surgery:

“I didn’t come back the way I wanted. You know, I was still extremely in pain,” said McBride.

“Were you ever fully healthy the rest of the season?”

“No. Not at all. Man, I was just fighting. Doing whatever I could. I mean, the funny thing about Philly it was probably the worst I felt in Game 4. Like, I was in a lot of pain.”

It was probably fair to assume at the time that McBride wasn’t at full strength when he came back from his hernia surgery in March. The initial reports had him taking “6-8 weeks”, and he ended up returning a little before the eight week mark but suffered a setback in one of his first games back.

He still had plenty of moments that proved his worth, though. The game he referenced was one of the best of his career and yet he dealt with the most pain in it. The Knicks were looking to close out the series against Philadelphia and McBride helped put his stamp on the series with an absurd seven 3-pointers. The last of those 3-pointers put the Knicks up 30 points in the 3rd quarter, essentially ending the season of the 76ers.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com