69 Points Between Them
The final score was 107-106. For three quarters it looked like more.
Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby combined for 69 of New York's 107 points — 36 for Brunson, 33 for Anunoby — and they got there through opposite methods. Brunson ground through 25 shots and 11 free throw attempts. Anunoby needed 15 shots and was done. The result was the same: San Antonio had no good answer for either, and paying attention to one meant conceding something to the other.
Brunson's 36: Contact and Accumulation
Brunson was 12-of-25 from the field and 9-of-11 from the free throw line. The 36 points look the same in the box score as they always do, but the mechanism matters. His pull-up jumpers were a setup, not the point. San Antonio loaded up on closeouts in the first half. Brunson turned them into fouls, then put-back opportunities, then the open pull-up when rotations arrived late.
The 11 free throw attempts are not visible in the chart. They are the reason the chart shows as many makes as it does — every contested drive that ended in contact shrunk San Antonio's willingness to help on the next one. By the fourth quarter the Spurs were defending Brunson differently than they started. He had trained the coverage across three quarters to respect his drives, then used the late-game space to score through traffic in ways that required different attention entirely.
Anunoby's 33: Precision Above the Arc
Anunoby made 7 threes on 9 attempts. He finished 10-of-15 from the field, 6-of-6 from the free throw line. It is the kind of shooting line that results not from a hot hand but from a system working exactly as designed.
When help rotated to Brunson, Anunoby was already in the corner. When San Antonio's coverage sagged off him to protect the paint, he stepped into threes before the rotation could recover. He did not manufacture looks. He accepted the ones the defense offered and made them at a rate that turned routine catch-and-shoot opportunities into a 33-point game.
His chart shows concentration above the arc and two makes at the rim — cuts off Brunson drives that the defense abandoned to crowd the paint. That distribution is not luck. It reflects the two reads available from the same possession: Brunson attacks, either he finishes or Anunoby catches and shoots. When the defense overcommits to the arc to prevent the three, Anunoby cuts. San Antonio could not cover both simultaneously, and the chart shows what happened when they guessed wrong.
The System Behind the Line
Brunson and Anunoby have co-existed in New York's offense long enough that the options are automatic. Brunson commands the coverage. Anunoby reads which way it overextends. Across four games San Antonio has tried different schemes on each. Game 4 was their most committed answer to Brunson — 12-of-25 is not a disaster to hold him to. But Anunoby's 7-of-9 from three is what happens when the game plan is designed around stopping one player.
Wembanyama finished with 24 points on 25 attempts — the looks were there, the makes were not. Dylan Harper was sharper: 21 points on 12 shots, the most efficient Spurs performance of the night. San Antonio scored 106. That number wins most games. It was not enough. New York takes Game 4, 107-106.