Derek Fisher said the New York Knicks’ Game 4 finish against the San Antonio Spurs reminded him of the one shot that built his reputation — the 0.4‑second heave that lifted the Lakers — and he struggled to put the Knicks’ final play into words. “It’s one of those moments that you just kinda of, so many things had to go right for those moments to happen,” Fisher said during an appearance on Wake Up Barstool after the game.
The moment he described came with 1.2 seconds remaining, when OG Anunoby tipped a loose ball into the basket to complete a comeback from 29 points down and give the Knicks the Game 4 victory. The result has been described as the biggest blown lead in NBA Finals history, and Fisher seized the connection to his own career-defining finish — Game 5 of the 2004 playoffs, when he hit a 0.4‑second shot for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Fisher kept returning to the same blunt observation: making a game‑winner is extraordinary. “Making a game‑winner in the NBA is like, so rare,” he said. He called Anunoby’s sequence “crazy,” then laid out the athletic improbability with another line that captured the play’s physics: “For him to run out as far out as where he ran from. To tip the ball and for it to go in that way. That’s tough man.”
In spurs news that afternoon, Fisher framed the anguish Spurs fans felt as the flip side of a franchise’s consistency. “The good and bad part for Spurs fans is like they’re in all these moments because of how freaking good they’ve been. 30 years basically, since 1999. They’ve just been in so many big games and playoff series. They gotta take their lumps just like everybody else,” he said, conceding sympathy but adding a wry caveat: “I feel for Spurs fans in that regard, but that’s only because I’m not playing or coaching. Otherwise they can take it all day.”
The comparison is starker because the Spurs’ resume is littered with high‑stakes episodes that did not go their way. The franchise was on the wrong end of another unforgettable close finish in the 2013 NBA Finals, when Ray Allen’s 3‑pointer with five seconds remaining in Game 6 forced overtime; Miami went on to win Games 6 and 7. Fisher’s comments put the Game 4 loss alongside that history — not as an anomaly but as another late, crushing turn for a team frequently involved in the sport’s biggest moments.
Fisher’s personal framing — that the rare geometry of a buzzer beater makes these losses and wins so acute — supplies the article’s tension. The Spurs are widely regarded as one of the NBA’s benchmark franchises since 1999, a three‑decade stretch Fisher mentioned by number. That reputation heightens the sting when fate snaps one game into a headline: a tip‑in, a 0.4‑second catch and shoot, a five‑second arc into history.
The practical question left by Fisher’s comparison is also the most urgent. After surrendering a 29‑point lead and falling on Anunoby’s 1.2‑second tip, can the Spurs respond in the next game — or will this finish become the defining punctuation of their Finals run? Fisher’s remarks underline what everyone watching now wants answered: whether a franchise used to big moments can flip one more time, this time in its favor.
