At halftime of Friday's Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Inside the NBA crew gave a comparison that was sure to send a chill down Orlando Magic fans' spines.
Victor Wembanyama was not looking like the next future face of the league. He had four points on 2-for-4 shooting. Karl-Anthony Towns had seemingly taken him out of the equation and was thoroughly outplaying him.
The panel of Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith each took their turn criticizing and challenging Victor Wembanyama to step up for his team.
Then Smith took it another step. A step Magic fans likely were not happy about.
Smith called back to his time with the Houston Rockets in the 1995 NBA Finals against the Orlando Magic.
He said the team was worried, of course, about Shaquille O'Neal and Anfernee Hardaway. But they were really worried about Nick Anderson. He was the player who could take the Magic to another level offensively.
But the Rockets sensed after Anderson missed four consecutive free throws in the final moments of regulation in Game 1 that they were in Anderson's head. That is what it felt like for Wembanyama at halftime.
Kenny comparing Wemby to Nick Anderson. Seems a bit much.
— Steph Noh (@StephNoh) June 6, 2026
"KAT has him in shock. That's it. A great player is in shock. Nick Anderson was a great player at that time. He became in shock." pic.twitter.com/FY3eVZl4WR
"He was a great, great player," Smith said of Anderson at halftime. "But when he missed those free throws, he became in shock. We were so worried about Nick Anderson in that series until he missed those free throws. KAT has him in shock. He has a great player in shock."
That was probably hyperbole.
Wembanyama recovered and scored 22 points in the second half, leading the Spurs back from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit. The Spurs briefly had the lead and had possession with a chance to win in a tie game.
That is when Wembanyama turned it over while trying to outlet it to a guard in the final seconds, allowing the Knicks to take the lead at the foul line. Wembanyama's game-winning jumper was no good.
It left the Spurs in a 2-0 hole that also brought the Magic back into the conversation. The San Antonio Spurs joined the 1993 Phoenix Suns and the 1995 Orlando Magic as the only teams to fall behind 2-0 in the Finals on their home floor.
Things do not bode well for the Spurs, neither the Suns nor the Magic won their series. And the Magic got swept.
Parallels between the Spurs and Magic
The deficit the San Antonio Spurs are facing in these NBA Finals has led a lot of people to draw a lot of parallels between this year's Spurs and the 1995 Orlando Magic. It is not merely just the halftime discussion. It is in how quickly those teams seemed to rise.
Like the Spurs in 2026, the Magic seemed to arrive well before anybody expected them to in 1995.
They were led by a third-year center who was transforming the league with his mere presence in Shaquille O'Neal. They scored some Lottery luck after winning the top pick to acquire the guard to lead them in Anfernee Hardaway.
Who knows if Stephon Castle is truly the Anfernee Hardaway to Victor Wembanyama's Shaquille O'Neal, but the comparison feels apt as the series began.
The 2026 San Antonio Spurs are the second-youngest team by average age to reach the NBA Finals, trailing only the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers. The 1995 Magic are now the fifth-youngest.
While the Orlando Magic lost to the defending champion Houston Rockets in 1995, the San Antonio Spurs beat the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. Clearly, though, they have run into a buzzsaw in the veteran New York Knicks.
The question is now how do they respond.
Devastating Finals losses at home
The series is not over. There have been several instances of teams erasing 2-0 deficits in the NBA Finals. The most recent came in 2021 when the Milwaukee Bucks won four straight to beat the Phoenix Suns in six games.
But undoubtedly, home losses are devastating. And it will be more difficult for the Spurs to win on the road to extend the series and climb back into this one.
Especially the way they lost.
The Spurs gave up an 11-0 run to lose by 10 points in Game 1, with Jalen Brunson hitting a go-ahead three with two minutes to play and then another tough jumper with a minute to play to put the Knicks up four.
San Antonio erased a 14-point deficit in the fourth quarter to tie the game, but New York again made the plays down the stretch to ice the game and build the 2-0 series lead.
Finals losses certainly feel heavier. And the Spurs will have a tough answer.
It was an answer the Orlando Magic could not find in 1995.
After losing a 20-point lead, the Magic led by three in the closing seconds. That is when Nick Anderson missed a pair of free throws, got his own rebound and then missed another pair of free throws to leave the door open. Kenny Smith forced overtime with a three from the top of the key.
In overtime, the Houston Rockets stole the game with a tip-in from Hakeem Olajuwon with less than a second to play.
Houston took a 2-0 series lead with a 117-106 in Game 2 and the series ended in four games in Houston, with the Magic losing by three in Game 3.
The team responded with perhaps its best season in franchise history with 59 wins in 1996. But they could not solve the 72-win Chicago Bulls as injuries, including to Anderson, hit them in the Eastern Conference Finals. Shaquille O'Neal departed for Los Angeles the following summer.
Anderson was never quite the same player after those free throws, either. He had 22 points, 11 rebounds and five assists in Game 1, but he averaged only 12.3 points per game and shot 3 for 10 from the foul line for the series.
It indeed got in his head.
Anderson, a career 66.7 percent free throw shooter, shot that well only once more in his career, making 69.2 percent of his free throws the following year. He shot worse than 50 percent from the foul line 1997 and again in 2000 (when he was with the Sacramento Kings).
Finals losses and Finals failures can hit very hard. Everyone will find out Monday in Game 3 what effect these losses have had. And whether the Spurs will face the same fate as the 1995 Magic.
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