You’d be hard-pressed to find a team that plays better than the Knicks with their backs against the wall.
Just one loss away from their season coming to an end, the Knicks stepped up with arguably their best game of the Eastern Conference Finals to this point. They outhustled, outdefended and were simply better than the Pacers on Thursday night in their 111-94 win. While a lot of the credit will go to the offense — Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns did combine to score 56 points — it was their defense that deserves its flowers.
Including Thursday, the Pacers played 15 games this postseason and Game 5 was the first time they were held under 100 points.
“I thought we came out great defensively,” OG Anunoby said after the game. “We were getting stops, flying up and down the floor.”
Not only did the Pacers score below 100, they shot just 40.5 percent (33 percent from three) and turned the ball over 20 times. Tyrese Haliburton, the Pacers star who has become the face of dismay for Knicks fans, had his worst game of the series. The guard scored just eight points on 2 of 7 shooting after averaging 24 points per game entering Game 5. He was a minus-23 on the court. Pascal Siakam was the only starter to score in double figures, with bench players Obi Toppin (11) and Benedict Mathurin (23) the only others to hit that mark.
So, what changed? Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau didn’t say it was just one thing, but praised his team’s defense as a whole.
“Sometimes it’s a combination of [Haliburton] missing some shots he normally makes, but our guys were tied together and tried to make him work for everything,” he said. “That’s what you have to do. You have to fight to win every possession.”
“I feel like we picked up our intensity a little bit. I think we paid attention to detail better as a team,” Brunson said of the defense on Haliburton. “The little things go a long way. Paying attention to the minute things, and things that don’t seem like a huge deal, they really do help.”
After Game 4’s loss, a lot of the attention was on Brunson and how the Pacers seemingly were targeting him on defense. Forcing the All-Star to foul and exploit his defensive weaknesses.
If that was the Pacers’ plan in Game 5, it didn’t work, especially when Haliburton had the ball.
“[Brunson] did an amazing job. That’s something that cap always does – he answers the call every time,” Towns said of Brunson’s defense. “We win as a team, we lose as a team. I’m never going to allow cap — he does so much for us and we ask so much out of him every game — he’s never going to go out there and take all the blame. We all do. Family and brothers never let someone go out there and take all the blame. We all got to be willing to lose together and win together.”
“That’s our guy, we know he’s going to bring it offensively but I feel like he dug in defensively and had great intensity,” Josh Hart said of Brunson.
“He’s our leader,” Miles McBride said. “When we see he’s playing like that, we all just want to do anything we can to get the win.”
Haliburton was asked if he was surprised by how the Knicks turned up the ball pressure on him and the team, and the Pacers star said he wasn’t and wants to look ahead to Game 6.
“We’re up 3-1, their season was on the line today. I understand they are going to come out and play hard, increase the pressure, do whatever they have to do to win,” Haliburton said. “And they did a great job of that and now it’s up to us to respond in Game 6. When you get here to this point, there’s no such thing as surprises… Kudos to them, they played better than us today. We’ve got to be prepared for Game 6.”
The Knicks will look to shut down Haliburton and the Pacers offense again in Game 6 on Saturday night to force a decisive Game 7 back at MSG.
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