De’Aaron Fox is a nine-year NBA veteran. He has played thousands of NBA minutes. He has been to the playoffs. He has the ball in his hands in late-game situations all the time.
And in the biggest moment of his career, he made a mistake a junior varsity coach would scream at.
Up 106-105 with seconds left in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Fox tracked down a loose ball in the frontcourt. Knicks defenders were behind him. The shot clock was off. All he had to do was dribble out the time or wait to get fouled. Game over, Spurs even the series, the entire conversation flips.
Instead, he attacked the rim. Against OG Anunoby. Who is one of the best help defenders alive.
Anunoby swatted the layup attempt off the backboard. The Knicks got the rebound. They called timeout. One possession later, Anunoby tipped in the game winner. San Antonio loses 107-106 and now trails the series 3-1.
Even Dave Portnoy roasted Fox on social media. Shannon Sharpe was more direct, asking what Fox was thinking. ESPN’s Bobby Marks called it an epic disaster.
The reactions were brutal because the play was inexplicable. There is no version of basketball strategy where you take a contested layup attempt in transition with a one-point lead and the shot clock off. Every single coach in the league teaches this exact scenario in practice. Hold the ball. Make them foul.
Fox did the opposite.
What makes it worse is that this is the second time in this Finals San Antonio has gift-wrapped a game with a late-game blunder. Game 2 ended with a Spurs turnover that gave the Knicks the win. Game 4 ended with Fox playing hero ball when he just needed to play smart.
A championship roster has to be able to execute the last 30 seconds of a tight playoff game. The Spurs are showing they cannot. Two heartbreakers in one Finals is not a coincidence. It is a pattern.
Fox will think about this play for the rest of his career. He has had a strong postseason overall, and he is one of the reasons the Spurs are even in this series. But the only thing anyone will remember about his Game 4 is the layup attempt that did not need to happen.
San Antonio now faces elimination in Game 5. They were a clock-management decision away from going home with a 2-2 series. Instead, they are one loss away from a 3-1 Finals defeat that will define the offseason.
If the Spurs lose this series, this play is the one that ends it. Not Wembanyama, not Coach Mitch Johnson, not the role players. One bad decision by one veteran guard.
That is the cost of bad situational awareness in the Finals.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
