SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Spurs had a plan for Mitchell Robinson. It backfired spectacularly.
In the first quarter of Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Friday night, San Antonio began intentionally fouling New York’s center every time he touched the ball in a dangerous spot — the Hack-a-Mitch strategy, familiar and rehearsed, designed to keep a suspect free-throw shooter off the glass and off the floor. Robinson went 3 of 6 from the line in that opening period. None of it worked the way the Spurs intended. Robinson finished with seven points, two critical defensive stops in the final 30 seconds, and a locker room that pointed to him as the emotional engine of a 105-104 Knicks victory and a 2-0 series lead over San Antonio.
“It means a lot when I ruin their strategy,” Robinson said after the game. “But I mean, it seems like they just want me off the court. So, in my eyes, I feel like I’m a threat.”
New York’s bench accounted for 27 points and 10 rebounds in the win, with Landry Shamet contributing 13, Deuce McBride adding five and Jose Alvarado finishing with two in a second unit that looked nothing like an afterthought against a Spurs team that had just rallied to within a point in the fourth quarter. Karl-Anthony Towns led New York with 21 points and 13 rebounds and Mikal Bridges added 20, but Towns himself credited the reserves. “Our team play had got us here,” he said in his postgame interview with ESPN.
The stretch that settled the game ran from the final minutes of the third quarter into the opening of the fourth. With Towns saddled by foul trouble and Jalen Brunson on the bench, coach Mike Brown emptied his reserve rotation into the lineup. What followed was an 11-3 run involving Robinson, Alvarado, McBride, Shamet and Bridges — five players whose names do not appear at the top of any championship odds board, executing the kind of collective defense and offensive decision-making that has defined this postseason run. Shamet’s 3-pointer at the one-minute mark of the fourth pushed the lead to 87-75, and the Spurs spent the rest of the game chasing.
“Somebody is always there,” Brown said. “A lot of contributions from a lot of guys, and that’s why you like having a team, because it could be anybody’s night on any given night.”
San Antonio was not entirely out of it. Victor Wembanyama, who finished with 29 points on 11-for-22 shooting, helped engineer a 14-4 Spurs run that cut New York’s lead to one point in the final minute. The Knicks led 104-103 with 30 seconds remaining when Wembanyama posted up and elevated over a 7-foot-tall defender for a mid-range jumper. The defender was Robinson. The shot missed.
With two seconds left and San Antonio trailing 105-104, Wembanyama squared up again — a 20-footer, slightly rushed, the French center’s long frame rising and extending. Robinson was there again. The ball bounced off the back of the rim. New York’s bench erupted. The streak reached 13.
“In my mind, I was just like, defend without fouling,” Robinson said. “Great contest, and just kind of how it went.”
Robinson’s very presence in this series was uncertain as recently as last week. He had surgery to repair a fractured fifth metacarpal in his right hand just days before the Finals opened, and his status for Game 1 carried a probable tag that felt, to some, more optimistic than realistic. He played through the injury in both games in San Antonio, shooting a combined 72 percent from the field and providing the physical counterweight to Wembanyama that few rosters in this league can claim to possess. According to the Associated Press, he never wavered publicly despite the discomfort.
The Knicks have now won 13 consecutive playoff games, a run that has included sweeps of the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers before this Finals series. Only the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors, who won their first 15 games of the postseason, have had a longer single-season playoff winning streak in NBA history. The Spurs’ 1999 title run, which also featured a 12-game winning streak before the Finals — and which ended against the Knicks — is the comparable benchmark New York is now chasing down.
San Antonio has not faced an obstacle like this before. The last two teams to lose the opening two Finals games on the road — the 1993 Chicago Bulls and 1995 Houston Rockets — both went on to win the title. The series now moves to Madison Square Garden, where President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend Game 3 on Monday, the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals game.
What the Spurs have not yet solved is the depth problem. Wembanyama is brilliant and relentless, but the Knicks have matched him with a starting unit that outplayed San Antonio’s best across two games, and a second unit capable of sustaining leads without the stars. The question entering Game 3 is whether the environment at the Garden — a building that has waited 53 years for a championship — compresses New York’s margin for error or amplifies it. Robinson and Shamet and McBride have given Brown a reason to believe the margin is wider than it looks.
“Our effort, it’s been crazy,” Robinson said. “We just came out there just fighting, talking to each other. Communication, that’s been key for us.”
Game 3 is scheduled for Monday night at 8:30 p.m. ET at Madison Square Garden, broadcast on ABC. The Knicks have not won an NBA championship since 1973.
