Knicks Rebound in Second Half, Top Spurs 124-113 to Capture NBA Cup
The New York Knicks outrebounded the San Antonio Spurs 59-42--including 34-18 in the second half--en route to winning the NBA Cup Championship Game, 124-113. OG Anunoby scored a game-high 28 points on 10-17 field goal shooting, and he also grabbed nine rebounds. Jalen Brunson--who received the NBA Cup MVP--had a quiet game by his lofty standards, finishing with 25 points on 11-27 field goal shooting plus a team-high eight assists as he amassed a game-high tying +15 plus/minus number. Karl-Anthony Towns added 16 points and 11 rebounds. The Knicks would not have won without strong performances by bench players Jordan Clarkson (15 points, game-high tying +15 plus/minus number), Tyler Kolek (14 points, five assists, five rebounds, +14 plus/minus number), and Mitchell Robinson (four points, game-high 15 rebounds).
Dylan Harper led the Spurs with 21 points off of the bench, and he also had a team-high tying seven rebounds. Victor Wembanyama, playing in just his second game after missing 12 games due to injury, had 18 points, six rebounds, and two blocked shots in 25 minutes off of the bench. Wembanyama has said that he modeled his game after several French players--including Tony Parker and Boris Diaw--and that his NBA role model is Russell Westbrook; his versatility is an asset, but in this game the Spurs would have benefited most if he had been a dominant rebounder instead of tying for third on his team in that category. De'Aaron Fox added 16 points and nine assists, but he shot just 5-13 from the field. Stephon Castle contributed 15 points, a game-high 12 assists, and seven rebounds while committing only two turnovers, but he also shot poorly from the field (5-15). The Spurs lost because of inefficient offense combined with an inability to complete defensive possessions with rebounds; they shot just .414 (41-99) from the field, and they barely grabbed half of the available defensive rebounds, controlling 24 defensive rebounds while giving up 23 offensive rebounds.
The Spurs never trailed in the first half, but they also never led by more than seven points before settling for a 61-59 halftime edge. Devin Vassell paced the Spurs with 12 first half points before going scoreless in the second half. Luke Kornet, who started at center because Wembanyama is still playing restricted minutes, had 10 first half points and a +9 plus minus number in 14 minutes before scoring just four points in 10 second half minutes. Wembanyama had a gaudy +21 plus/minus number in San Antonio's 111-109 NBA Cup semifinals win versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, but he only found his footing in spurts in this game, and he had a quiet first half (four points on 2-6 field goal shooting, four rebounds, -7 plus/minus number). Anunoby (20 first half points) and Brunson (15 first half points) did most of the damage for the Knicks in the first 24 minutes.
Castle's free throw at the 5:50 mark of the third quarter pushed the Spurs' lead to 82-71, but the Knicks trimmed the deficit to 94-89 by the end of the stanza before taking their first lead of the game, 97-94, on Clarkson's three pointer with 10:27 remaining in the fourth quarter. That shot capped off a 10-0 Knicks' run spanning the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth quarter. The Knicks led the rest of the way, but did not enjoy a double digit advantage until Kolek made a pair of free throws to put them up 120-110 with just 33.4 seconds left.
I picked the Knicks to win the Eastern Conference, but I underestimated the Knicks in the NBA Cup Championship Game, picking the Spurs to beat the Knicks in a close contest. Perhaps I fell victim to recency bias after watching the Spurs end the Thunder's 16 game winning streak, but I think that there should be high expectations for the Spurs. In my 2025-26 Western Conference Preview, I wrote, "There are no more excuses for missing the playoffs. The Spurs have a generational talent--the 2024 NBA Rookie of the Year Victor Wembanyama--plus they have veteran former All-Star guard De'Aaron Fox, and they also have 2025 NBA Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle."
Robinson seized 10 offensive rebounds, including six in the fourth quarter when the Knicks took control of the game. Despite all of the talk about "range shooting" and "gravity," defense and rebounding are still essential elements for winning basketball games. Amazon Prime's announcing crew of Ian Eagle, Dwyane Wade, and Stan Van Gundy acknowledged Robinson's impact and they also praised Kolek's contributions as a scorer, playmaker, and secondary ballhandler who took pressure off of Brunson. After Brunson received the MVP trophy, he mentioned that the team win and the individual award would not have been possible without the contributions from OG Anunoby, Tyler Kolek, Jordan Clarkson, and Mitchell Robinson. Anunoby and Robinson provided elite defense and rebounding, while Kolek and Clarkson provided supplementary scoring.
This was a competitive and entertaining NBA game, but I still have mixed feelings about the NBA Cup because it should not be necessary to provide over $500,000 per player in bonus money to extract maximum effort and focus from these very highly paid professionals. It also is not necessary to keep telling fans how great the NBA Cup is as a concept and how well-played the NBA Cup games have been; fans can see with their own eyes, and make their own judgments.
Van Gundy is very knowledgeable about basketball, but it has become difficult to listen to him call a game because of his not so thinly veiled political commentary that no one requested or needs (regardless of whether you agree or disagree with him), and because of bombastic statements such as, "If you're not a fan of the NBA Cup then you just don't like basketball." Not only is that a self-serving statement--he is being paid by the NBA to like and promote the NBA Cup--but it is a ridiculous statement. I have loved basketball for my whole life, and I have very good, logical reasons for not being a fan of the NBA Cup. The NBA Cup quarterfinals, semifinals, and Championship Game were competitive, but by putting extra emphasis on these games--and by offering bonus money for these games--the NBA is implicitly saying that non-NBA Cup games are not as important. It is strange for the NBA to devalue the vast majority of its regular season games, and to admit that the league's multimillionaire players will not play hard without being offered more money on top of the lavish, guaranteed sums that they are already paid.
To the extent that NBA Cup games are better than regular season NBA games, that could be interpreted as an indictment of the attitude that players have toward the regular season more than as a recommendation for the NBA Cup. A cynic could suggest that if the players' effort and attention is affected to this extent by money then perhaps the NBA should get rid of guaranteed contracts and directly connect compensation to performance; most of us who have real world jobs are evaluated every year based on our performance, and our compensation is impacted by how well we perform. I understand that due to the nature of collective bargaining there is a 0.00% chance that guaranteed contracts will be eliminated, but Van Gundy's relentless politicking about the NBA Cup's greatness did not resonate with me at all.
Van Gundy is at his best when he analyzes team strategy and the skill sets of individual players, and he is at his worst when he ventures beyond his expertise to become a shill for the NBA. The excellent Amazon Prime studio crew of Taylor Rooks, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Blake Griffin, and Udonis Haslem interviewed NBA Commissioner Adam Silver before the game, and it was interesting to hear Silver criticize unnamed commentators who he claimed talk badly about the NBA instead of just analyzing the games; it does not take a conspiracy theorist to figure out that he was most likely referring to Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal, not does it take a conspiracy theorist to contrast Van Gundy's gushing praise for the NBA Cup and Adam Silver with the way that the NBA managed to largely remove the very popular--and very candid--NBA on TNT crew from the regular broadcast rotation. As the kids would say, Van Gundy understands the assignment; he is keenly aware of Silver's views about both politics and about the league. I did not agree with everything that the NBA on TNT guys said--or sometimes failed to say--about basketball and about social issues, but I always felt that they were being honest as opposed to reciting the company line.
The NBA and its media partners promote the NBA Cup as if it is very significant, but the NBA Cup Championship Game is not included in the regular season standings, nor does it not confer any advantage for playoff seeding, and the game's statistics do not officially count. The NBA Cup Championship Game is all about the money; that does not change the fact that this particular game was competitive most of the way, but it should be noted that each NBA Cup Championship Game has been decided by double digits: in 2023 the L.A. Lakers dominated the Indiana Pacers, 123-109, and in 2024 the Milwaukee Bucks routed the Oklahoma City Thunder, 97-81. We have not come close to seeing an NBA Cup Championship Game being decided on a buzzer beater, though to be fair this New York-San Antonio game was competitive most of the way before the Knicks took control at the very end.
I enjoyed watching and writing about the NBA Cup games, but I would enjoy the NBA even more if the league got rid of tanking and load management while also figuring out how to have a competitive, entertaining All-Star Game instead of the travesty that the NBA All-Star Game has become for the past several years.
Labels: Dylan Harper, Jalen Brunson, Mitchell Robinson, New York Knicks, OG Anunoby, San Antonio Spurs, Stephon Castle, Tyler Kolek, Victor Wembanyama
posted by David Friedman @ 2:20 AM
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