Only five teams have won an NBA playoff series after losing the first two games at home. The Spurs hope to follow a similar blueprint to become the first to do so in the NBA Finals. After their first win in the series, they have a renewed chance going into Game 4 against the Knicks.
Through two games of the 2026 NBA Finals, the San Antonio Spurs backed themselves into a corner that no team has ever come out of.
They lost the first two games of the best-of-seven series at home, and no team has ever done that and come back on to win the NBA title.
However, when looking at playoff matchups outside the Finals, there are five such examples of a team with home court advantage surrendering its first two games and still going on to win the series. And in their 115-111 win over the New York Knicks in Game 3 Monday night, the Spurs showed they have what it takes to possibly follow in their footsteps.
When studying the teams that accomplished what the Spurs are trying to do in the next two weeks (Game 4 is Wednesday night), there are typically three pathways to success:
They benefited from some form of luck (whether it be injury or shooting luck). Some critical adjustments changed the tenor of the matchup. They had big-time performances from marquee players.As the Spurs continue to seek a sixth NBA championship in franchise history, here’s how some previous teams have rallied in earlier rounds of the playoffs.
Plain Ol’ Luck
Rajon Rondo played a key role in helping the eighth-seeded Chicago Bulls climb to a 2-0 series lead over the top-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2017 playoffs. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for the Celtics), the point guard sustained a right thumb injury that sidelined him while the Celtics won the final four games of the Eastern Conference series.
In the first two games of a 2021 first-round series, the Los Angeles Clippers were on the wrong side of shooting variance against the Dallas Mavericks, who shot 50.0% on 3-pointers. However, that unsustainable figure eventually regressed to the norm, and the Mavericks shot just 34.3% behind the arc in the final five games of the series as the Clippers rallied to win in seven.
Key Adjustments
When the Mavericks, as No. 4 seeds, fell behind to the fifth-seeded Houston Rockets 2-0 at home in 2005, coach Avery Johnson decided to field some smaller lineup, including power forward Dirk Nowitzki at the five, to space out their Texas rival and keep 7-foot-6 Yao Ming (one of the best paint protectors of his era) out of the paint. The Mavs rallied for a 4-3 series win.
In the aforementioned Clippers-Mavs series, coach Tyronn Lue also chose to go small, swapping 6-7 Nicolas Batum in for 7-foot Ivica Zubac in the starting lineup after Game 3. Batum wound up +50 in plus-minus over the final four games.
For the Los Angeles Lakers in a 1969 playoff series against the San Francisco Warriors, coach Butch van Breda Kolff’s key adjustment involved a swap at starting guard. In their first two games – both losses – Keith Erickson was the starter. But in the last four games, they started Johnny Egan, and three of those four wins were by double-digit margins.
Key Performances
The playoffs are all about heroic showings, and that’s especially true when trying to pull off a miracle. The best example of this came in the 1994 Western Conference semifinals between the Houston Rockets and Phoenix Suns.
The Suns may have had two All-Stars in Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson, but Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon was the best player in the series. This showed in Game 7, when Olajuwon tallied 37 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots in a 104-94 victory. Sam Cassell, then a rookie, also sparked with 22 points off the bench – his best scoring performance of that postseason.
The Spurs Win Game 3
While a team doesn’t need all three pathways to success at once for this kind of comeback, the Spurs showed glimmers of hope in all these areas in Game 3 against the Knicks (including without any visible injuries – yes, good luck).
San Antonio got a boost in shot-making. After missing their first two attempts, the Spurs hit their next eight shots to settle in against their opponent and an extremely raucous crowd at Madison Square Garden.
Guard Stephon Castle had a particularly strong performance while scoring 23 points. After hitting just 42.9% of his 2-point attempts and 33.3% of his 3s in the first two games, Castle was 66.7% from inside the arc and 40% from outside of it.
As for adjustments by the Spurs, the biggest tactical shift was how they defended Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns. Across both Game 1 and 2, 12 of Towns’ 27 field goal attempts (44.4%) were defended by Victor Wembanyama (per NBA.com). In Game 3, only one of his 10 shots was defended by this season’s NBA Defensive Player of the Year.
The Spurs did whatever they could to keep Wembanyama from defending Towns to avoid freeing up the paint and allowing the All-NBA big to blow by him off the dribble. As a result, Towns was held to just 11 points in 38 minutes (his second-lowest point total of the postseason).
Lastly, the big-game heroics. Wembanyama responded to his earlier late-game miscues by scoring 32 points on 72.9% true shooting, while adding eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals, and recording a +7 plus-minus in nearly 39 minutes.
In addition to Castle in the backcourt, rookie Dylan Harper is capable of turning in some Cassell-like performances when all the chips are in the middle of the table. Like when he scored 27 points (his high for both the regular and postseason) against the Trail Blazers in a first-round win when Wembanyama was sidelined by injury.
Guard De’Aaron Fox also is no stranger to an increased offensive load, and his clutch gene was on full display when he hit a midrange dagger with 12 seconds left in regulation.
While the Spurs won Game 3, the Opta NBA Predictions model still only gives them a 36.9% chance (as of Tuesday morning) of winning the NBA Finals. Still, if they’re going to beat the Knicks and the odds, history says what they are doing right now is the ideal way to go about it.
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2026 NBA Finals: The Spurs Show They Can Still Pull Off the Improbable Opta Analyst.
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