NEW YORK (AP) — The San Antonio Spurs have plenty of company in being on the losing end of a dramatic comeback.
The New York Knicks rallied from 29 points down and beat the Spurs 107-106 on OG Anunoby 's tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night.
The stunning scene left the Knicks, who have just two titles in their 80-year history and hadn’t even been to the finals since 1999, with a 3-1 lead and three chances to win the best-of-seven series — starting with Game 5 on Saturday night in San Antonio.
Jalen Brunson (36 points) and Anunoby (33 points) led the charge and sent the Spurs into sports lore. Here's a look at other memorable meltdowns:
The Falcons led 28-3 with 8:31 remaining in the third quarter of Super Bowl 51, a seemingly insurmountable lead even with quarterback Tom Brady and the Patriots on the other side of the field. But Brady & Co. scored 25 consecutive points — the largest comeback in Super Bowl history — to send the 2017 finale to overtime. New England sealed the victory by winning the coin toss and scoring a touchdown on the opening drive.
Northern Iowa led Texas A&M 69-57 with 44 seconds left in the second round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament before the Aggies turned up the press and sparked the largest final-minute comeback in Division I history. The 11th-seeded Panthers committed four turnovers and failed to get the ball past the half-court line. The Aggies closed with a 14-2 run that forced overtime. They prevailed in double OT.
Spieth, then 22, started the back nine with a five-shot lead at Augusta National in 2016, but he bogeyed Nos. 10 and 11 and quadruple-bogeyed the par-3 12th. By the time he got to the 13th tee, he was facing a three-shot deficit.
The Red Sox, a gritty group with a “cowboy up” motto, were on the verge of getting swept in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS in Boston. They trailed 4-3 heading into their final at-bat before mounting a rally against Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. David Ortiz provided a walk-off home run in the 12th inning. The Red Sox won three more to close out the series, then swept St. Louis in the World Series to secure their first championship since 1918.
Van de Velde entered the final round of the 1999 Open at Carnoustie, Scotland, with a five-shot lead. He stepped to No. 18 with a three-stroke advantage before one of the biggest meltdowns in golf history. He hit a grandstand, found a creek and ended up with a triple-bogey to join Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie in a four-hole playoff. Lawrie, 10 shots back entering the final round, won by three.
Norman took a six-shot lead into the final round at Augusta National in 1996 but stumbled spectacularly by shooting 78 in the final round. Norman lost the lead by the 12th hole and ended up finishing five strokes behind winner Nick Faldo.
The New York Knicks held a 105-99 lead with 18.7 seconds remaining before Indiana star Reggie Miller caught fire and sent the Knicks to one of the more stunning end-game collapses in league lore. Miller scored eight points in nine seconds in Game 1 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals. He hit a 3-pointer, stole the ensuing inbounds pass and drained another trey to tie the game at 105. The Knicks had chances to close it out, but John Starks missed two free throws and Patrick Ewing missed a 10-footer before Miller was fouled on the rebound. Miller sank both free throws to give the Pacers a 107-105 victory. The Pacers went on to win the series in seven games.
Houston led 35-3 in the fourth quarter but failed to slow down backup Reich, who was filling in for star quarterback Jim Kelly. Reich ended the day with four TD passes, including three to Andre Reed. Buffalo’s Steve Christie kicked the winning field goal in overtime as the Bills rallied to win 41-38.
After losing the first three games in 1942, the Toronto Maple Leafs won the next four to upset the Detroit Red Wings in seven games, winning their fourth Stanley Cup and becoming the first team in North American sports history to overcome a 3-0 series deficit to win a playoff series.
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
Knicks fans react during a watch party inside Central Park for Game 4 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
New York Knicks fans react during a watch party inside Central Park for Game 4 of the NBA Finals basketball series between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. government on Thursday announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company in a move some experts say will only deepen the island's crises and hit vulnerable Cubans the hardest.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted that key assets of the company, known as Cupet, were “unlawfully expropriated from American owners years ago.”
He also accused Cuba’s government of weaponizing energy.
“While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure, Cuba’s Communist leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets,” Rubio said in a statement.
He further noted, without providing evidence, that Cuban officials “resell countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control.”
Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, pushed back against Rubio's comments in a post on X.
“The US Secretary of State, driven by ambitions of conquest, presidential aspirations, and the vindictive sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled his political career, is now further tightening the economic and energy blockade against Cuba,” he wrote. “To justify this, he doesn’t resort to excuses prepared by his State Department, but rather to the usual vulgar lies, the most aggressive, ignorant, and rabid rhetoric among Cuba’s enemies.”
Cuba's government has previously said that sanctions punish all Cubans and are aimed at strangling the economy to destabilize both the government and its people.
Cupet’s fuel sales to the public are almost nonexistent and are currently rationed.
William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba at the American University in the United States, said the latest U.S. measure seems like an effort to block any major oil shipments.
“It appears that they’re all in on strangling the Cuban economy," he said. “Their policy is a contradiction. They claim they don’t want to create a humanitarian crisis, although that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Ricardo Herrero, a Cuban economist based in the U.S. and executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C., said he was “genuinely vexed” by the move.
“How are private importers supposed to store diesel and get it into vehicles without using CUPET facilities?,” he wrote on X. “This undermines what, until this morning, had been a humanitarian priority for the US. Either something much bigger is afoot, or we’ve entered the 'indiscriminate cruelty' phase of this policy.”
It's unclear whether Cupet has any assets in the U.S., although it's unlikely, LeoGrande said.
He said he could understand the logic of the measure to decentralize the government and strengthen and empower the private sector by enabling it to sell gasoline to state enterprises, or force those enterprises to move toward privatization so they could be oil recipients.
“Now, the Cubans are not going to privatize Cupet in the hope that might work and that somehow the U.S. might allow oil to go through in that way,” LeoGrande said.
He noted that most private businesses in Cuba are small and don't have the infrastructure to land an oil tanker, unload the product and distribute it.
“They’re running a huge risk of triggering mass migration,” he said of the U.S. government.
Thursday's announcement comes almost a week after the U.S. government sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, as well as several institutions.
Rubio said in a statement that all property or interests of Cupet located in the U.S. or in possession or control of U.S. people are blocked.
“ President Trump wants a new future for the Cuban people with greater economic and political freedom and opportunity,” Rubio wrote on X. “Until then, we will continue to target the Communist regime’s ability to leverage its energy trade to further its corrupt agenda and violently repress the Cuban people.”
Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old embargo and a lack of petroleum as the U.S. keeps pushing for a change in its economic and political model.
Power outages — already common given the economic and energetic crisis gripping the island for the past five years — have only intensified since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.
Both countries have acknowledged that they’ve held talks, but the scope of them is unknown.
Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro.
Last Thursday, Trump said Cuba has “sort of collapsed” and said “we’re going to handle that as soon as we’ve finished” military operations in Iran.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
FILE - A man walks past a gas station that has run out of fuel, located near the U.S Embassy, pictured in the background, in Havana, Cuba, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)
