The Knicks are one win from their first NBA title since 1973 after turning Game 4 into a 3-1 lead in the 2026 NBA Finals. New York erased a 29-point deficit on the road and now sends San Antonio into Saturday night facing elimination at Frost Bank Center.
That makes Victor Wembanyama the center of everything again. Game 5 is set for 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC, and the search around Kayo Sports is about the same question the series has been asking for weeks: how much more can he carry, and for how long?
The numbers show why the burden has become such a part of the story. Wembanyama averaged 29.2 minutes in the regular season and played 1,866 total regular-season minutes, less than half of San Antonio’s 3,946. He then moved from 33.9 minutes across the first four playoff rounds to 40.3 minutes per game in the Finals, a jump that came after 712 playoff minutes and a season in which he finished third in Kia MVP voting behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić.
San Antonio has not been able to hide what that usage means. Only Devin Vassell and Stephon Castle have played more playoff minutes, and the Finals have asked Wembanyama to stay on the floor longer even as there have been signs that the load is starting to show. That is the problem at the heart of Game 5: the Spurs need him at his sharpest, but the series has already pushed him past the pace he carried through the regular season.
Game 4 showed how fast this can turn. The Spurs opened a 29-point lead on the road and still lost after OG Anunoby blocked De'Aaron Fox and then finished the winning tip-in. It was the kind of collapse that changes a series, not just a game, and it left New York with a chance to close out the title on Saturday night.
What comes next is plain enough. If the Knicks finish this at Frost Bank Center, they are champions for the first time in more than five decades. If San Antonio extends the series, it almost certainly does so by finding a way to ease the load on Wembanyama without losing the edge he has been asked to provide.
