5 Leadership Lessons From Basketball’s Greatest Comeback

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— Joe

The Knicks are NBA Champions for the first time in decades. I’ll be able to see the start of their ticker-tape parade in Battery Park from my window. It’s been a long time coming, and New Yorkers have waited for this moment for 53 years. I’m not a major basketball fan, but I grew up with the Knicks and I always want them to do well.

But this moment is special not just because my hometown team are World Champions again. The way the Knicks defeated the Spurs is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in basketball. The Knickerbockers were down by double-digits in each of the five games, and trailed in the series for over 70% of the minutes played.

While the game 5 win clinched the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, it was the Knicks come-from-behind win in game 4—closing a 29 point deficit in the second half—that will define the team forever.

The Knicks victory in game 4 was a masterclass in coaching, and it’s the product of a winning mindset and incredible perseverance from the players. There are some amazing leadership lessons we can draw from it that apply in both business and sports.

1. Only the next play matters.
   Twenty-nine points is a major deficit in any game. When the national championship is on the line, and you’re playing against the toughest team in the NBA, it could easily seem insurmountable. Turning around a game like that requires that every single player on the team contribute. No one can believe that loss is inevitable. Amid that sort of adversity, players have to maintain total focus. They can’t get distracted by the deficit or fears over what will happen when they lose. Instead, the only thing that they can allow themselves to see is the next play. And the next play. And the next play. What does it take to win each possession? Can you do it again and again?

   If players get in their heads or believe that they can’t win, then they won’t win. Winning when you’re in a bad position requires giving up your ego to the process and doing your best every moment. If you don’t score, try to score on the next possession. You can’t let setbacks become predictions. Each and every time the Knicks got the ball, they treated it like a new chance to win, and over time, that’s what they did.

   

   First Take@FirstTake

   "You turn the page. You figure out what are we gonna do to be better the next play." @jalenbrunson1 on how the Knicks responded to Josh Harts' missed layup at the end of Game 4 🏀

   4:16 PM · Jun 15, 2026 · 86.6K Views

   26 Replies · 177 Reposts · 2.38K Likes

2. Great players take responsibility for their actions.
   Coaches have a big role to play in helping players stay focused and navigate the tactical and strategic realities they face. But in the heat of play, when everything is on the line, everyone has to take complete and total responsibility for themselves. Coaches have to take responsibility for how they support, guide and motivate their players. They have to own their physical and psychological preparation for the toughest moments. Players have to do the same.

   To succeed, everyone has to stand on their own two feet. You can’t blame setbacks on anyone else. You can’t make excuses. As soon as you start to do that, you’re letting yourself off the hook. That’s harmful to your team, undermines your teammates, and can easily turn into a losing mindset. Jalen Brunson was an amazing example of this. He trusted himself and his abilities—and his teammates—completely and totally, and he knew that the only thing that would determine if the Knicks won or lost was what they actually did on the court.

3. Understand your resources.
   Coming into the second half of game 4, the Spurs were clearly feeling pretty comfortable. No team had ever dug themselves out of a 29 point hole in the NBA finals before. This comfort was a problem. With two quarters left to play, the Knicks accelerated the pace of play, and the Spurs didn’t compensate for it until it was too late. The Spurs needed to run down the shot clock as much as possible every time they got the ball. They attempted 56 shots in the second half of the game. Imagine if they had run down the shot clock by 20 seconds (out of 24) each time; that would have accounted for 18.5 minutes of playing time. That’s an extreme example, but longer Spurs possessions overall would have made it much harder for the Knicks to come back. Instead, the Spurs let the Knicks control the clock, and they lost as a result.

4. Pay attention to the context.
   The Spurs’ time management failure, and the Knicks ability to focus and capitalize on it, is the result of coaching. The Knicks’ Mike Brown saw what it would take for the team to win in the second half, and then he communicated clearly and consistently to his guys what they needed to do, play after play, to accomplish that. Mitch Johnson is a talented coach, but he didn’t recognize that conditions had changed until it was too late for the Spurs to win. This was most apparent in game 4, but the Knicks had substantial deficits in every game and managed to turn it around each time. This inability to adjust in the face of changing conditions and tactics was a consistent problem for the Spurs.

5. Every game is a new game.
   For players, the only thing that matters is the next play, and then the next play. This is a principle to live by, and it’s a recipe for excellence in any discipline (in fact, it’s a pretty good definition of “discipline”). But there’s a corollary to it: Every game is a new game. Even the best teams are going to lose sometimes. You will have a down quarter or a deal that doesn’t work out. That’s inevitable. What matters is what you do afterwards. Do you obsess over it and let it define you? Or do you analyze it, isolate what went wrong, devise a solution, and then start fresh?

   The ability to learn from losses and then leave them in the past is something that every All Star and MVP has. It’s what enables people to improve and win long-term, and it’s something that we all can practice every day.

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Today’s lesson comes from the Knicks’ own Jalen Brunson, and it sums up exactly what it takes to win against seemingly impossible odds.

“The magic is in the work.”

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