NEW YORK -- Knicks coach Mike Brown credited the San Antonio Spurs for winning Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden to climb back into the best-of-seven series. He did not extend the same pleasantries to the officials.
Brown pointed his finger at the stat sheet, which showed the Spurs taking three times as many free throws as the Knicks in the second half as San Antonio escaped with a 115-111 win Monday night to cut New York's series lead to 2-1.
The Knicks were in the penalty for the final 9:18 of the fourth quarter, and the Spurs held a 24-8 advantage in free throw attempts.
"I talked to [the officials]. They outshot us 14-3 in the third quarter from the free throw line. I talked to them, and they said, well, this is a foul, this is a foul," Brown said. "That's the question I had with them is, you're right. Maybe we did foul. But they fouled, too."
Brown hammered the point home a few times in his postgame news conference, clearly wanting the officiating to be part of the discussion before Wednesday's Game 4.
"It's going to be that because I said it. The story is going to be there," Brown said. "But there are some controllables that we did not do a good job of doing. We allowed them to hit first at the beginning of the game. We allowed them to hit first in the beginning of the second half.
"We turned the ball over and we were stagnant offensively and we allowed them to get to the paint, and we did not pay attention to detail to what we are supposed to do defensively."
The loss was the Knicks' first in almost two months, ending a 13-game playoff winning streak. For the first time since the 1993 Finals, the road team won the first three games of the series.
New York's players didn't use the officiating as an excuse.
"That ain't cost us the game. Turned the ball over. Didn't execute," Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said. "Didn't do what got us 13 straight wins in a row. That's how you lose a game. We didn't do what we've been doing for 13. We decided to do something different, and it ain't going to work."
Jalen Brunson also pointed to the turnovers rather than the officiating. The Knicks ended the first half with a scoring flurry to take a seven-point lead, but it wasn't long before the Spurs were back in it, refusing to buckle beneath the backdrop of a celebratory atmosphere in New York as the Garden hosted a Finals game for the first time since 1999.
"There are some things that we can control that I didn't think that we controlled tonight. And then like I said, maybe we fouled 24 times, but I'm baffled that they only fouled eight in the second half." Knicks coach Mike Brown
"I think we turned the ball over a lot, first and foremost, and also we were fouling a lot and put them at the line about 30 times," Brunson said. "With our live ball turnovers, got them out in transition."
Brunson led New York with 32 points on 11-of-25 shooting (44%), but it was still below the standard he set in the previous two series. The Knicks' fourth-quarter offense ground to a halt, their graceful ball movement found only in spurts when attempting to mount a comeback.
"I liked some of the looks, but I also think we were pretty stagnant," Brunson said. "There's definitely things that we can learn from. Especially with our approach when we start the game and with the way we start the half, I don't think we did well and I don't think I did well, either."
OG Anunoby scored 28 points, continuing his matchup advantage against the Spurs, but he took only 13 shots. Towns, whom the Knicks have run a lot of offense through during this postseason run, didn't get the ball much in the second half. In the first half, the Knicks scored 23 points with zero turnovers on 14 plays when Towns had a frontcourt touch, according to ESPN Research.
The Knicks shot just 36% in the second half and were a ghastly 7-for-27 in the fourth quarter.
"I tell the guys, it's a seven-game series for a reason. They are a great team," Brown said. "There are some things that we can control that I didn't think that we controlled tonight. And then like I said, maybe we fouled 24 times, but I'm baffled that they only fouled eight in the second half."
Towns and his teammates didn't control Victor Wembanyama as much as they did in the first two games, compounding things with their biggest defensive point of emphasis failing them.
Wembanyama scored 10 of his game-high 32 points in the fourth quarter, in addition to collecting eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals in 38 minutes. Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper increasingly found holes in the Knicks' defense, looking more like a confident team than a shell-shocked one coming into an intimidating Garden environment.
"They were really physical early. They played really fast," Knicks guard Landry Shamet said. "Got into the paint far too much for our liking. They were really aggressive. Castle had 18 points when I looked up at some point in the first half, so he had it going. Harper was getting into the paint. [De'Aaron] Fox. Wemby was catching lobs."
Now the concern is waking up a young team when the Knicks had the Spurs on the ropes.
"It doesn't surprise us at all. They were down 2-0," Josh Hart said. "You knew they were going to come out with a sense of urgency and a sense of desperation. We should have started the game off better."