The greatest game ever played?

This year’s NBA Finals, in which the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs to end a 53-year championship drought, was tense and tight throughout. Game Four, in which the Knicks overcame a 29-point second half deficit to win 107-106, is universally acknowledged to be the masterpiece of the series. But it was more than that: it was the greatest game ever played in the history of American team sports.

That’s a bold statement, for sure. But I don’t believe I’m suffering from recency bias. Nor am I saying this because I’m a 66-year-old lifelong Knicks fan who was wrapping up junior high school when they last won the title. Hear me out:
A truly great game requires the coming together of several elements. First, the stakes must be high, which eliminates games played during the regular season no matter how extraordinary they are. Playoff games are a must, preferably in the championship round.

Second, the drama must be of the highest order, which usually involves overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds in the form of a massive comeback. High drama certainly can come in other forms, such as Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962, but those are superlative individual achievements. What most sports fans consider a great game usually involves a thrilling team comeback.

Third, a great game should have an iconic, signature play, such as Bobby Thomson’s bottom-of-the-ninth home run to beat the Dodgers and advance to the 1951 World Series, or LeBron James’s full-court rundown to block Andre Iguodala’s layup to win the 2016 NBA Finals.

Game Four had it all. The stakes were massive. A Knicks win would put them up 3-1 in the series and in the catbird seat, given that only one team had ever come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the Finals. A Spurs win would, after their Game Three win, even the series at 2-2 and return the momentum and home-court advantage to them. To be sure, it was not an elimination game for either team. But it was critically important.

The comeback was insane. The Knicks were getting demolished. The Spurs were unstoppable. They made fourteen threes in the first half, a Finals record for any half. They led 76-49 at the half, the most first-half points ever scored by a road team in a Finals game. They led by 29 at the 9:40 mark of the third quarter. During the entire 2025-26 regular season and playoffs, no team had overcome a 29-point deficit, at any point in the game. At that point, the Knicks had a 0.4% shot at winning.

And then it happened, slowly at first, with the Knicks chipping away — hitting singles, as Jalen Brunson said after the game. By 9:33 of the fourth quarter they had cut nine points off the lead— but they were still down by 20, and still had only a 0.4% chance to win. In the last thirty years of playoff basketball, teams other than the Knicks were 3-751 when down by 20 or more in the fourth quarter.

In the next nine minutes the Knicks erased all but a point off the lead. And with two seconds remaining, OG Anunoby capped it all off with the greatest single play in Knicks history. In an astonishing display of athleticism and grace under pressure, OG swooped in from beyond the three-point line, soared over two Spurs defenders, and tipped in Jalen Brunson’s missed three-pointer for the win. The degree of difficulty was off the charts.

In that moment millions of hyperventilating Knicks fans lost their minds.

The Tip, as the play will forever be known, was, in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s eloquent words, “as beautiful an encapsulation of the majesty of sports as anything you’re ever likely to see. The seemingly impossible happened.”

The Tip completed the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history and the second greatest comeback in NBA playoff history (after the Clippers’ 31-point third-quarter comeback in the first round of the 2019 playoffs).

So there you have it: super-high stakes, an unprecedented comeback, and the most unforgettable of game-winning plays. Can any other game match that?

I don’t think so. Let’s look at some of the usual contenders.

The 1951 Giants game ending with Bobby Thomson’s home run — “the shot heard round the world” — was perhaps the most famous baseball game ever played. But that was not a World Series game (it was a playoff game to decide the National League championship), he hit it with one out, not two, and it helped the Giants overcome a three-run ninth-inning deficit — impressive but not in the same league as surmounting a 29-point disadvantage. What’s more, it was a pop fly that traveled just 315 feet — dramatic for sure, but not comparable to the stunning magnificence of OG’s play.

Tom Brady’s Patriots overcame a second-half 28-3 deficit to win the 2017 Super Bowl: the greatest comeback ever to win the championship. But it lacked an iconic last second, score-flipping, game-winning moment.

The helmet catch — David Tyree’s unbelievable grab of Eli Manning’s desperation pass to sustain the drive that allowed the New York Giants to beat the hitherto-undefeated Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl — was amazing, but that game involved nothing like the Knicks’ comeback.

Game Six of the 1986 World Series is also a good contender, since it was an elimination game for the Mets and they came back in the bottom of the tenth with two outs, no one on base and losing 5-3. But they won that game on a wild pitch and the famous Bill Buckner error, and it’s hard to say that a game ending on miscues should be considered the greatest game ever.

Sports fans are a disputatious lot, and I’m certain good arguments can and will be put forth for other worthy contenders that I haven’t even mentioned. But right now nothing else comes to mind. So I’m just going to say it (again): the greatest game ever played in the history of American team sports took place in New York City at Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of hoops, on June 10, 2026.

James Speyer lives in Sharon. He is very happy.