NEW YORK — Any sane person would have told Miles McBride that his team no longer stood a chance.The New York Knicks trailed by 27 at halftime. The NBA Finals were bound to go back to San Antonio tied at two games apiece. But McBride, surrounded by fellow believers, thought otherwise.The 25-year-old guard reeled through his squad’s first-half gaffes, going through them in his head one by one. There were some bad fouls, some missed defensive rotations, some jumpers that could have gone in but rimmed out. McBride himself could not hit a shot. The Spurs, meanwhile, could not miss.They seemingly floated in every scoop shot, nailed every 3-pointer and flushed every dunk. Over the first two quarters, they did not miss a free throw. They barely even turned it over, just twice in the first half. San Antonio was playing a perfect basketball game. But in McBride’s head, this was a good sign for the Knicks.In an effort to decipher the proper deficit, the one he felt would be more reflective of realistic performance instead of the one the measly scoreboard projects, he dinged the Spurs for a few of their made shots. Such fiery shooting seemed unsustainable for another two quarters. He removed some more points from the lead because of the Knicks’ silly mistakes. In a moment of impromptu McBridian mathematics, he decided the lead was more like 14.“Fourteen,” he thought. “That is doable.”The Knicks could overcome 14. After all, they had stormed back from worse.Just last series, they trailed the Cleveland Cavaliers by 22 points with only eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter of Game 1. Somehow, they won. Because “somehow” has been woven into the Knicks’ DNA. “Somehow” is what they do. “Somehow” is why McBride sat at his locker convincing himself that Wednesday’s first-half shellacking, one that put the Spurs up as many as 29 points, could not poison them. “Somehow,” especially after such a comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals that ended in a miraculous 107-106 victory, placing them just a single win away from their first championship in 53 years, is the identity of this team.This crew of 18 players — from McBride to Jalen Brunson to OG Anunoby — never actually believes it is losing.Not when the team is up 30 or 40 or 50 in a playoff game, as New York has been various times this spring, and not when it trails by sums that would kill anyone else. To the unenlightened, a 29-point deficit would inspire a white flag. Only with MSG magic does it produce a white knight.In that locker room, the one whose stability has carried the Knicks to a 3-1 finals lead, McBride’s thought process is not exceptional. It is the norm.“You don’t look at when you’re down 29 — we’ve got to win this game,” Josh Hart said. “You look at it when you’re down 29 of ‘OK, let’s get it to 20.’ There’s three minutes left in the third quarter. We’re down 18, you’re thinking, ‘Let’s get it to 10.’ In the fourth quarter, you’re like, this is winning time. Anything can happen. And when you have a group of guys that do that — it starts with (president) Leon (Rose), (executive VP William Wesley) — and (head coach) Mike (Brown) is the same — and it just trickles down.”At halftime, Brown did not bother to show any film from the first two quarters. Normally, a head coach would guide the players through a few clips. On Wednesday, he let them be.“There really wasn’t much to be said at that point,” Brunson said. “Just we need to chip away, hit singles.”A few of the players discussed how San Antonio’s hot shooting could not continue. Assistant coach Darren Erman, a holdover from Tom Thibodeau’s staff who was around for last season’s run to the Eastern Conference finals, reminded some of the guys about the first two games of their 2025 series against the Boston Celtics.The Knicks fell down 20 points in each of those. They won both and eventually upset the defending-champion Celtics in six games.But those comebacks against Boston have nothing on these. The Celtics bricked shot after shot. As they cooled, the Knicks stumbled in the right direction. But the ones against Cleveland and now San Antonio have been stampedes, laced with brilliance from Brunson, fourth-quarter fallaways from Karl-Anthony Towns and heroics from Anunoby.Anunoby’s cape flashes in unexpected moments, when he skies for LeBron James-esque transition blocks, when the basketball just kind of finds him and he splashes in 3-pointers or, of course, when he scrambles into the paint for the greatest tip-in in finals history.The Knicks did not know Game 4 would end this way. They figured the Spurs’ shooting would collapse but not to this degree. They did not predict that Anunoby would nail seven 3-pointers, that splicing Jose Alvarado into a lineup with Brunson would bewitch the opponent, that De’Aaron Fox would attempt the most ill-advised layup imaginable, that San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama’s legs would move without any vigor over the last quarter of a 44-minute trudge.They did not anticipate any of the details. They just knew what McBride and the rest of the team told themselves: That pulling off the largest comeback in NBA Finals history would be just another night at the office.