NEW YORK -- Knicks owner James Dolan predicted his team would win. But even he couldn’t have predicted how it happened.
The Knicks trailed by as many as 29 points before mounting a miraculous second-half comeback and pulling off a stunning 107-106 victory in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left completed an all-timer.
It was a frenzied atmosphere in the bowels of MSG, with N.Y.’s 7th Avenue Squad hype team going crazy and mobbing Taylor Swift and Timothee Chalamet as they began their descent to exit the arena.
“Leon (Rose) and I thought the team was good enough last year. Fortunately we’re being proven right. I make predictions here and they come true: We’re gonna win tonight. We’re gonna win the (NBA) Finals,” Dolan said prior to the game on WFAN.
The Knicks, who lead the series 3-1, are now just one win away from their first NBA title since 1973.
For much of the night, it appeared that the battle on the court wasn’t going to match the verbal sparring that took place between Dolan, N.Y. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the NYPD before the game.
The Knicks canceled a pregame watch party outside MSG hours before Game 4, with Dolan blasting city officials, including Mamdani and police commissioner Jessica Tisch, during a radio appearance on WFAN for “not having faith in their own police force.”
Mamdani responded that MSG’s permit request to have a watch party for 500-999 fans was granted (it could’ve gotten as high as 10,000). MSG then responded via statement, “We do not think it was fair to just allow a small group to celebrate outside the Garden when everybody else was being shut out.”
The Game 3 watch party was moved to Bryant Park (which featured 21 being detained) as tighter security surrounded MSG due to President Trump’s attendance. Trump was a guest of Dolan, with the duo sitting next to one another in a suite that was fortified by thick glass.
“Having him there was a great honor. He asked me a lot of questions,” Dolan said. “We were talking basketball.”
Fans, despite needing to show their tickets at screening sites, reported having a much easier time getting into MSG on Wednesday. There were four entry points. The perimeter wall that had been put up for Trump’s arrival was gone for Game 4.
One more Knicks win, and the aggrieved parties will have to come together to plan a ticker tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes.
