From tipoff to final buzzer, Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals between the Knicks and the Spurs lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes. There was one tie: 0-0. There were just three lead changes, all in the final 82 seconds. There were 42 fouls called — 21 on each team. Two of them were flagrants — one apiece. There were 72 made baskets — 36 for the Knicks, 36 for the Spurs. There were eight blocked shots — you guessed it, four per side.
In every way, this was an epic basketball game, as closely contested as the sport allows. Across those 170 minutes, two teams and two cities and two fanbases would volley dizzying highs and nauseating lows and every manner of emotion in between as allowed by law. The Knicks had played 2,619 games inside this iteration of Madison Square Garden since Feb. 14, 1968. None of them were quite like what No. 2,620 would turn out to be …
2:44 p.m.: There will be 19,812 people filling 19,812 seats at the Garden tonight. They all start their pilgrimage somewhere. Michael Clark’s begins in Penn Station — the one on North Charles Street in Baltimore, where Clark, a native of Randolph, N.J., now lives — and ends at the “other” Penn Station 2 hours and 16 minutes later.
6:33 p.m.: “Some nights,” says Bruce Beck, the iconic Channel 4 sports anchor, as he steps into a Garden elevator, “you can just sense something special’s about to happen, can’t you?”
