Victor Wembanyama’s aggression on the court was once again called into question as the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks played Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden.

During the first half, Knicks All-Star guard Jalen Brunson was trying to guard Wembanyama near the free throw line when the 7-foot-4 center put his hand on the back of Brunson’s head and shoved him to the court.

However, Wembanyama was never called for the foul and play continued with the Knicks in possession of the ball.

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Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks works against Dylan Harper and Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs during the third quarter in Game Three of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 8, 2026. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Brunson immediately got into Wembanyama’s face, and it appeared the Frenchman was smiling before the point guard got back to business.

The incident was similar to one that occurred in Game 2’s win for the Knicks on the road, when Brunson’s backup, Jose Alvarado, went to box out Wembanyama. Alvarado, who has comparable stature to Brunson, was wrapped up by Wembanyama and thrown away from the play.

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Once again, no foul call was made.

The Spurs are known for their physicality, but many believed that Wemby should’ve been called for fouls in these cases.

Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks shoots a three-point basket over Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs during the second quarter of Game Three in the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 8, 2026. (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)

San Antonio started this game red-hot, owning an 11-point lead after the first quarter, 33-22. But these Knicks have consistently shown their ability to come back no matter the deficit.

After a second quarter run, the Knicks ended the locker room with a seven-point lead at halftime.

Brunson was a main reason why that was the case, going 5-of-11 from the field for 15 points with three assists and one rebound.

New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson reacts as San Antonio Spurs forward Victor Wembanyama looks on during the second quarter of game three of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 8, 2026. (Vincent Carchietta/Imagn Images)

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As for Wembanyama, he was an efficient 6-of-10 from the field for 15 points of his own, while hauling in four rebounds and dishing out three assists.

The Spurs are trying to avoid a brutal 3-0 deficit in the best-of-seven series, while the Knicks are hoping they can keep momentum in the second half to have the chance at a sweep in their own building on Wednesday night in Game 4.

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New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown reacts during Game 3 of the NBA Finals basketball series against the San Antonio Spurs, Monday, June 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

NBA scores today: Spurs vs Knicks – NBA Finals Game 3

NEW YORK — Knicks coach Mike Brown criticized the officiating in Game 3 of the NBA Finals after the San Antonio Spurs shot 24 free throws in the second half to New York’s eight.

“I never thought I’d see that in an NBA Finals game, and I saw it tonight,” Brown said.

The Spurs won 115-111 on Monday night to cut the Knicks’ lead in the series to 2-1. It was New York’s first loss in 46 days, ending a 13-game postseason winning streak.

READ: Knicks fever sweeps New York for Game 3 of NBA Finals vs Spurs

Brown credited the Spurs for their performance and listed some things the Knicks did poorly. But he said the officiating made a difference in the game.

“San Antonio is a great team. They are a great team, OK. It’s going to lower our odds big time, big time, if we play Game 4 and in the second half, they get 24 free-throw attempts to our eight. Maybe we were fouling. Maybe we were fouling. But they fouled, too.

“There were a lot of things that we didn’t do that we did in Game 1 and Game 2,” Brown added. “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.”

Mikal Bridges had to go to the bench early after picking up two quick fouls and Jalen Brunson had to do the same in the third quarter when he picked up his fourth. The Spurs shot 14 free throws in the third quarter to the Knicks’ three.

READ: In NY, everyone seems caught up in NBA Finals hoopla except Knicks

“There are a lot of things we can do better and we are going to have to do better, but the same breath, like I said, hopefully they will see some more fouls called against them, so it’s not 24-8,” Brown said. “This is a four-point ballgame. Four-point ballgame. One-possession ballgame going down the stretch. It’s tough to overcome.”

The Spurs finished 25 for 32 for the game, while the Knicks were 18 for 22. Told about Brown’s comments, Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said the referees weren’t the problem.

“That didn’t cost us the game,” he said. “Turned the ball over. Didn’t execute. Didn’t do what got us 13 straight wins in a row. That’s how you lose a game.”

The home team in the NBA Finals remained winless in their building, as the San Antonio Spurs took Game 3, 115-11, in much-needed fashion on Monday night at Madison Square Garden.

New York still owns the lead, 2-1, in the series, but the Spurs closed out thanks to tremendous defense, timely buckets, and forcing the Knicks to go 2-of-12 from three-point territory in the fourth quarter. As a result, the Knicks’ 13-game playoff win streak has been snapped.

Victor Wembanyama, who had a chance to win Game 2 but missed his final shot, finished with 32 points, eight rebounds and six assists to lead the Spurs.

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Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs reacts during the second quarter against the New York Knicks in Game Three of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 8, 2026. (Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)

But it was Wembanyama’s teammates, De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle putting in clutch baskets, to help the winning efforts.

The Spurs came out with a clear determination to set the tone on the road, and it’s what all basketball fans should’ve expected considering where the series stood at tip-off. San Antonio owned an 11-point lead after the first quarter, as Wembanyama scored nine points on 4-of-6 shooting, while Castle was a perfect 3-of-3 for seven points.

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But if there’s anything we’ve learned about the Knicks, they will mount a comeback no matter the deficit. And it happened again before the end of the half.

New York started to get their rhythm, using the sold-out home crowd at Madison Square Garden to their advantage. They closed out the half with a seven-point lead, 64-57, as OG Anunoby dropped 17 points on 5-of-6 shooting, including two made threes and five free throws made.

Jalen Brunson also poured in 15 points, while Josh Hart, left wide open on purpose by the Spurs, was hitting his three pointers for 13 points.

The Knicks had all the momentum heading into the second half, but the Spurs started similarly to the beginning of this game. They forced turnovers and capitalized, erasing their seven-point deficit almost immediately.

Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks works against Dylan Harper and Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs during the third quarter in Game Three of the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 8, 2026. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Both teams traded buckets, with San Antonio taking a one-point lead into the fourth quarter that was bound to be a heavyweight bout at “The Mecca.”

This time, though, the Spurs were finally able to hang on to their fourth-quarter lead, as the Knicks quickly got into foul trouble and allowed San Antonio to get into the bonus right away. It was Wembanyama taking advantage of those, while the Knicks were cold to start the quarter.

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San Antonio got the lead up to eight in the fourth quarter with 4:50 left to play after Wembanyama knocked in two more free throws, and that was leading to some key defensive plays for the Spurs. The epitome of that was the Knicks trying to move the ball around for a three-point attempt, swinging it along the arc. But the Spurs continued to close out, all to end with Wembanyama swatting away Landry Shamet’s layup attempt.

The first clutch basket that the Spurs hit came from Castle with 1:53 left in the fourth quarter. San Antonio owned just a four-point lead and Wembanyama past the ball up with mere seconds left on the shot clock. With a good contest from the Knicks in Castle’s face, he buried a deep three-point on the wing to get the lead back to seven in a moment where the Knicks had momentum.

Then, after Brunson drained the Knicks’ first three-pointer of the quarter to cut the deficit to three, Fox drained a 15-foot stepback jumper that seemed like a dagger with 12.2 left in the game.

Anunoby, who finished with 28 points on 9-of-12 shooting, kept the Knicks’ hopes alive with a three of his own following a timeout to cut it to two with 9.4 left. But Castle buried both free throws in a much-needed situation to close the door on New York.

Karl-Anthony Towns of the New York Knicks defends Stephon Castle of the San Antonio Spurs during the second quarter of Game 3 in the 2026 NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City on June 8, 2026. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

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In the end, Castle finished with 23 point of 8-of-14 shooting with five rebounds and five assists, while every Spurs starter finished the game with double-digit points. Dylan Harper, who has played tremendous bench minutes for San Antonio, also scored 13 on 18 shot attempts.

For the Knicks, one stat line that stands out is Shamet’s 1-of-8 from the field, including 1-of-7 from three-point land where he has thrived all throughout these playoffs.

The Spurs pulled off the win with President Donald Trump in attendance. He was seated with Knicks owner James Dolan in a suite. The president’s presence led to heightened security around the arena throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

Game 4 of the NBA Finals will tip off from Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night at 8:30 p.m. ET.

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Coming into the NBA Finals, it was fair to assume the San Antonio Spurs would draw more whistles than the New York Knicks. In the 2025-26 regular season, the Spurs averaged 3.6 more free-throw attempts per game than their opponents, while the Knicks averaged 1.4 fewer than their opponents. New York has improved in the postseason, but San Antonio still has a better free-throw margin, and that has proven out through the first three games.

Despite the extended data, officiating has become one of the stories of these NBA Finals. In the first two games, the Spurs attempted 19 more free throws than the Knicks, excluding attempts taken by Mitchell Robinson upon being intentionally fouled. This discrepancy persisted into Game 3. While the Knicks attempted six more first-half free throws than the Spurs, the visitors had a 24-8 advantage at the charity stripe in the second half. 

Knicks coach Mike Brown was not happy. While he acknowledged that his team has plenty to clean up on its own merits, he devoted the first three minutes or so of his post-game press conference to officiating.

“I will say this: I never thought I would be in the NBA Finals and see a team get 24 free throw attempts in the second half to another team’s eight,” Brown said. “I don’t think I complain much about officials or the fairness when it comes to the free throw attempts. San Antonio is a great team. They are a great team, OK. It’s going to lower our odds big time, big time, if we play Game 4, and in the second half, they get 24 free throw attempts to our eight.

“Maybe we were fouling. Maybe we were fouling. But they fouled, too.”

Brown continued: “[Karl-Anthony Towns] gets the ball off of a loose-ball rebound and he shoots it, and he gets whacked across the arm, and they hit the ball, and it goes out of bounds on the baseline. There’s no foul. There were opportunities for fouls to be called, to at least try to even the free throws out.

“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

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.

A Somali referee chosen to officiate at the World Cup has been denied entry into the United States.

Omar Artan was turned away by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon his arrival at Miami International Airport from Istanbul on Saturday.

CBP confirmed on Monday that a Somali national who was planning to referee in the World Cup had been denied entry.

Although the CBP statement on Monday did not explicitly name the individual, Artan is the sole World Cup referee representing Somalia.

“During processing, the traveler underwent additional inspection, a routine part of CBP’s inspection process when officers need to verify information or determine admissibility,” CBP said in its statement.

“Following inspection, the traveler, a referee for the FIFA World Cup, was determined to be inadmissible due to vetting concerns and was denied entry.”

CBP noted that all travelers seeking entry into the U.S. — including athletes, coaches and staff — are subject to CBP inspection and vetting.

“Admissibility determinations are made on a case-by-case basis using law enforcement, national security, and immigration information available at the time of inspection,” the CBP statement said.

“CBP officers have the authority to question travelers, conduct inspections, and determine admissibility consistent with U.S. law.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s World Cup team arrived in Mexico this weekend wearing lapel pins that paid tribute to the victims of a deadly missile strike on an elementary school at the start of the war with the United States and Israel.

The gold-colored pins, worn by players on their jackets upon arrival in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday, bore the number “168.”

The number refers to the victims, predominantly children, who were killed in a February 28 strike on a school in Minab, southern Iran, an attack widely attributed to the U.S.

Iran’s embassy in Hungary on Monday acknowledged the pins in a social media post, specifically referencing Minab.

The gesture follows a similar tribute by the team in March, prior to a warmup game in Antalya, Turkey. On that occasion, players displayed pink and purple school backpacks during their national anthem, drawing attention to the same incident.

“I’m still very blurry. That’s the whole problem.”

That’s how Victor Wembanyama described himself in the immediate aftermath of Game 2, trying to get his head around the disastrous final few possessions that put the Spurs in an 0-2 hole. He said at the time he needed to slow his mind down and get some clarity.

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“The Playoffs, it’s like a — I don’t know how to say that word — a whirlwind. It’s hard to put your head out of the water,” Wembanyama said of his headspace. “Sometimes I don’t even go to watch the game back right away. I need some time off, let my brain cool down, recover. Recover as much for the body as for the mind.”

Wembanyama took that time off before Game 3 and found his clarity sitting in Gramercy Park in New York on Sunday, sketching a picture of a statue (of Edwin Booth, legendary Shakespearean actor of the mid-1800s, although unfortunately for him, he is better remembered as the brother of John Wilkes Booth).

In the latest edition of WWE RAW, Rey Mysterio and Penta locked horns in an Intercontinental Championship match. The Hall of Famer failed to dethrone the masked man.

However, in the post-match, Rusev and Ethan Page attacked them. The Bulgarian Brute unmasked the Master of 619 on live television. Even in public appearances, Rey had rarely been spotted without a mask and always maintained his culture.

Getting unmasked by Rusev on the red brand is indeed a big moment on the show. In this article, let’s discuss three possible reasons why the legendary star got unmasked on RAW this week.

#3. WWE wants to put over Chad Gable

Since the Mask vs. Mask match, Chad Gable has been the talk of the town among the fans. During SmackDown last week, he appeared on the show and apologized to Rey Fenix for his actions.

On the latest episode of the Monday Night show, Gable confronted Penta, Rey Mysterio, and Dragon Lee backstage and apologized for disrespecting their culture.

When Rusev and Ethan Page launched the post-match assault, the former Alpha Academy member rescued the IC Champion, Mysterio, and Lee. Gable also grabbed Rey’s mask in his hand and handed it over to Penta and Dragon Lee.

In this segment, Gable got a massive pop from the live crowd, particularly when he saved the lucha stars. A major reason Mysterio got unmasked on RAW could be linked to Chad Gable.

WWE may want to capitalize on the 40-year-old star buzz. By adding the unmasked angle, the company not only heated the entire segment but also added more relevance to Gable’s El Grande Americano gimmick and his apologies to the luchadores.

#2. To set the stage for a tag team match at WWE Night of Champions 2026

WWE Night of Champions 2026 is the next premium live event of the Sports Entertainment juggernaut. As of now, the company is building the PLE primarily around King & Queen of the Ring winners.

However, some more matches are expected to be part of the show. The reason Rey Mysterio got unmasked on the red brand could be connected to this. The Triple H-led creative regime likely wants to add tag team matches to the card.

As a result, they prefer to add this unmasked angle on RAW as it will instantly escalate the heat and set the stage for a tag team match at the Saudi Arabia show. The former El Grande Americano and Rey may pair as allies against Rusev and Ethan Page. If not Chad Gable, then Penta might team up with the Hall of Famer.

#1. To add a significant moment on RAW

Controversial angles on live television usually attract big numbers online. Rey Mysterio getting unmasked isn’t usual for the WWE Universe. Such an angle allows World Wrestling Entertainment to generate significant buzz.

Getting massive numbers online could explain the unmasked angle on the red brand. The rest remains to be seen; what plans WWE has in store for the Hall of Famer after what happened on Monday Night RAW.