Derek Fisher’s New York Knicks stunned the basketball world on Tuesday night.

The Knicks brought the NBA’s worst record into a meeting with the defending champion San Antonio Spurs—and came out with a victory.

With a 104-100 overtime victory, the Knicks became the first team in league history to take a record below .200 into a game this late in the season and knock off the defending camps. That left the NBA community standing with its jaw agape, but Coach Fish knew his team had the potential for wins like this all along.

“They have this inside of them. They are capable of doing this on more nights than we have,” Derek said. “It feels great, more for them than anything. It’s not easy to just keep coming back to a situation where things don’t seem to be going right. It takes a lot of character to keep coming back, so I’m just happy for them that they received a temporary reward for that tonight.”

The Knicks have been through some enormous changes this year, evidenced by their starting lineup, which didn’t feature a single player from the season opener. However, Alexey Shved, Langston Galloway, Lance Thomas, Lou Amundson and Andrea Bargnani came together with a fantastic performance.

Shved and Galloway led the way. Just a rookie, Galloway tallied a game-high 22 points, while Shved turned in 21 with seven assists and three steals, then Bargnani added 16 points and 10 rebounds. Amundson was big down low as well, going for 12 points and a game-high 17 boards, while Thomas turned in eight points, nearly putting the entire starting five in double figures.

All five Knicks starters scored in the first quarter, and Bargnani led the way with eight points, though the Spurs jumped out to a 29-25 lead after 12 minutes. New York then went cold on offense in the second, shooting just 33.3 percent to allow San Antonio to stretch its lead to 10, 52-42, at the half.

After the break, Coach Fish and the Knicks looked back to that starting five to spark the rally. Galloway went 5-of-7 from the field and knocked down a three, while Shved and Bargnani combined for 10 points off 5-of-9 shooting.

At the 8:17 mark, Galloway hit his trifecta to spark a tremendous run, in which the Knicks scored 15 points in a span of three minutes, cutting the Spurs lead to just three, 64-61. The defending champs, however, responded with a run of their own to close the quarter with a 75-68 lead.

Still facing that deficit, the Knicks needed a big performance on both sides to close the gap, and that’s exactly what they received. They suffocated the Spurs offense, holding it to just 36.8 percent shooting, while shooting 63.2 percent themselves. And it was the second unit doing the work.

Galloway was the only starter to log more than eight minutes, while Cole Aldrich, Jason Smith, Travis Wear and Shane Larkin combined to score 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting.

“That group of guys that was out on the floor, they put us in position to have a chance to win this game,” D-Fish said when asked about giving his second unit heavy minutes in the final frame. “I was basically going to go down with those guys, if that’s what it took, because they earned the right to be out there. I think you have to reward the effort and the guys who are getting it done that night. And the great part was Andrea and Alexey were in full support of it, and I think that’s the kind of team we have to be.”

In the waning seconds, though, a beautiful play by Shved and Amundson forced OT. Shved took the inbound and darted through the lane, drawing in the Spurs defense, where he dished to Amundson, who gave a hard take to the rim and dropped in the game-tying shot.

In overtime, neither team could buy a bucket. San Antonio ended the game 1-of-9, while N.Y. was 1-of-7. The biggest difference in extra time came when Shved was fouled shooting a three and made two shots, giving the Knicks a lead they never relinquished.

“They were really good,” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. “I take my hat off to him, a really difficult year and watching Derek conduct himself the way he has all year long is a really impressive thing. He and the coaches deserve a lot of credit and the players were fantastic tonight. They moved the ball better than we did, they played better team basketball.”

After receiving praise from Popovich, who is regarded as perhaps the best coach currently in the NBA, Derek talked about what Coach Pop has built with the Spurs and how he’ll follow a similar blueprint.

“I think they’re bringing some cool back to selfless basketball,” Fisher said of the Spurs. “Those are the things we’re trying to instill in our guys. We won’t be the Spurs. We’ll be the Knicks. But that’s kind of who we want to become: a selfless team that’s all about the team.”

In beating the defending champions, D-Fish was asked if this victory was his team’s biggest of the season. He wasn’t ready to go that far, but he did admit that this triumph was a sign of just how far the Knicks have come over the season.

“Because we’re playing the defending World Champions, there’s a lot of additional attention on this game. I don’t know if it’s the biggest win of the year. I do think it symbolizes that we are growing, that we are moving in the positive direction,” Coach Fish said. “I don’t know if we would’ve been capable of this several weeks ago, a few months ago, I don’t know our makeup was ready to do this.”

NEXT UP

After handling the reigning champions, the Knicks (14-53) will face a different challenge when they play host to the Western Conference’s worst team, the Minnesota Timberwolves (14-52).

Despite the disparity in opponents from Tuesday to Thursday, D-Fish hopes his team will bring the same intensity to Madison Square Garden.

“It should be no different Thursday night, that we have to come back and do the same thing with the same effort,” Fish says.

The Wolves took the first meeting between the two struggling squads this season in a 115-99 victory in November. However, they have lost nine of their last 10 and will be on the second night of a back-to-back when they come to MSG after taking on the Toronto Raptors Wednesday night.

Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET.

RELATED LINKS

• Fisher: Knicks are moving in a positive direction (MSG, March 17, 2015)
• Spurs at Knicks: Game Book (NBA, March 17, 2015)
• Shved, Galloway help Knicks stun Spurs in OT (AP, March 17, 2015)
• Gregg Popovich rips into Spurs (ESPN NY, March 18, 2015)
• Knicks outlast Spurs in OT (Newsday, March 17, 2015)
• The two sides of the Knicks’ stunning upset (NY Post, March 17, 2015)
• Good basketball elsewhere holds lessons for Knicks (NY Times, March 17, 2015)
• Knicks rally to top Spurs in overtime (NY Daily News, March 17, 2015)