As the NBA Finals kicked off, it seemed reasonable to expect the San Antonio Spurs to receive more favorable calls than the New York Knicks. Throughout the 2025-26 regular season, the Spurs consistently averaged 3.6 more free-throw attempts per game compared to their opponents, whereas the Knicks found themselves on the opposite end, with 1.4 fewer attempts. While New York’s performance at the line has seen an upswing during the playoffs, San Antonio still maintains a stronger free-throw margin, clearly reflected in the initial three games of the series.
Despite the statistical background, officiating has emerged as a focal point of conversation in these Finals. In the first two matchups, the Spurs enjoyed a 19-attempt advantage in free throws over the Knicks, excluding the attempts made by Mitchell Robinson due to intentional fouling. This trend continued into Game 3, where, although the Knicks led with six additional attempts in the first half, the Spurs dominated the second half with a striking 24-8 lead in free throws.
Knicks head coach Mike Brown expressed his frustrations candidly. Though he admitted his team had its own areas to improve, he spent a significant portion of his post-game press conference addressing the officiating discrepancies.
“Let me say this: I never imagined reaching the NBA Finals and witnessing such a disparity—24 free-throw attempts for one team in the second half compared to another team’s eight,” Brown remarked. “I usually refrain from criticizing officials or questioning the fairness of free throw distributions. San Antonio is undoubtedly a remarkable team. But if we head into Game 4 and face a similar situation, with them getting 24 attempts to our eight in the second half, it will severely diminish our chances.”
He added, “Sure, maybe we committed fouls. But they did, too.”
Brown further elaborated on a specific incident: “[Karl-Anthony Towns] grabbed the ball off a loose-ball rebound, went for the shot, got hit across the arm, and yet there was no call when it went out of bounds at the baseline. There were moments when fouls could have been called to balance out the free throw numbers a bit.”
“Now, we didn’t play good. San Antonio played great. We could have played better. There was a lot of things that we didn’t do that we did in Game 1 and Game 2. But to go 24 free throw attempts in the second half, that’s 48 for the game if you think about the way they called that second half, compared to eight. All the shots we took, we got fouled four times, roughly, for eight free throw attempts.
“Again, I don’t complain much. I never thought I’d see that in an NBA Finals game, and I saw it tonight. That’s tough to overcome when you’re playing against a great team. Having said that, again, San Antonio won the game. I’m giving their head coach and their players a lot of credit. [Victor Wembanyama] played great. Stephon Castle played great. I could go down the line. [De’Aaron] Fox hit a big shot late. But as a team, if you take away the fouls and the free throws that should have, in my opinion, been a little bit more even, again maybe we fouled that many times but they fouled, too. And it’s not shown at the end of the day on this box score.”
Free-throw margin in 2026 NBA Finals
Excluding intentional fouls on Mitchell Robinson
|
Game 1 |
25 |
18 |
Spurs +7 |
|
Game 2 |
27 |
15 |
Spurs +12 |
|
Game 3 |
32 |
22 |
Spurs +10 |
The specific play Brown mentioned involving KAT could refer to one of two shot attempts that came on consecutive possessions in the fourth quarter. With less than 3 minutes remaining, Towns picks up a loose ball off a Jalen Brunson shot that was blocked, but gets blocked out of bounds himself when he tries to score on a layup. When the Knicks next inbound the ball, Towns is again blocked at the rim and is visibly upset by the lack of whistle.
Though Brown did not directly reference it, there has been quite a bit of frustration among Knicks fans about what seems to be a different level of physicality the Spurs have been allowed to play with. Most notably, Wembanyama appears to have gotten away with several plays that should have been whistled for fouls … and possibly reviewed as flagrants.
On this Game 2 box out of Jose Alvarado, for instance, Wemby seemingly gets both arms around Alvarado’s neck before attempting to toss him out of the way. There was no whistle.
And then, early in Game 3, Wembanyama got away with this strong shove to the head of Brunson.
Brunson has taken the brunt of San Antonio’s aggressive physicality. Take this play from Game 3. While pursuing a rebound, Brunson attempted to box out Castle, but Castle stuck out his elbow and ran straight through him. He was whistled for a foul, but upon review, it was only considered a common foul, not a flagrant.
As Brown noted, there was physicality on both sides. Still, there has been a feeling throughout the NBA Finals that the officials have been far quicker to whistle the Knicks than the Spurs.
Take this from Game 2 when Robinson was whistled for this soft technical foul that was later rescinded by the NBA. Remember: Game 2 was decided by a single point. There were entirely plausible scenarios in which that whistle could have swung the outcome, and undoing the call in the history books would not have changed the game’s outcome.
Knicks players, to their credit, did not add fuel to the officiating fire. When asked about the shove from Wembanyama, Brunson merely replied, “Whatever you saw is what you saw.” When Towns was asked about the officiating, he left no doubt about his own stance. “That ain’t cost us the game,” he said.
The NBA releases a last 2-minute report on calls made late in close games, but otherwise, it only addresses calls made in the rest of the game if a flagrant or technical foul is retroactively applied or removed. NBA teams frequently send videos to the league office about calls they believe were missed or incorrectly officiated.
The Knicks will almost certainly do so after Game 3. The numbers suggested the Spurs would draw more free throws in this series than the Knicks, but at least in Brown’s mind, that margin got out of hand in the second half of Game 3.
