The Knicks survived Jalen Brunson, the NBA’s best crunchtime player, being sent to the bench with foul trouble at the start of the fourth quarter to build a 17-point lead in the first four minutes without him.
It was the largest lead they held over the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. New York took a few shots back from the visitors, but the advantage was back to 14 points with under three minutes to play.
The win probability for the Knicks at that point: 99.7 percent.
In the final 160 seconds of regulation, the game was tied. After the five minutes of overtime, which began with the Knicks taking a four-point lead, the Pacers’ comeback was complete in the form of a 138-135 gut-punch for the home fans.
“We didn’t close the game out,” Josh Hart said. “I feel like our intensity dropped, we started playing slower, playing more into their hands. We let that one slip.”
“They can score the ball,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “You just can never let your guard down against them. No lead is safe.”
From there, the Knicks went 2-for-4 from the floor and 2-for-4 from the free-throw line while committing one turnover. The Pacers got hot: Aaron Nesmith made four consecutive threes and two free throws, Pascal Siakam went 1-for-2 at the line, all to put them in positon for Tyrese Haliburton, thanks to a very kind back iron, made the longest possible two-point shot with a toe on the line to send the game to overtime capping a 20-6 run.
After making the shot, Haliburton, emulating Reggie Miller, covered his throat. It would be in overtime when the Pacers finally went at the Knicks’ throat, converting on 6-for-11 from the floor, and capping the comeback.
“The playoffs, when you win, it’s the best thing ever. When you lose, it’s the worst thing ever,” said Brunson, who finished with a game-high 43 points but was a minus-8 in 38 minutes.
Asked how he felt after scoring 20 points with five made threes in the fourth quarter, Nesmith said, “It’s unreal, it’s probably the best feeling in the world to me. I love it when that basket feels like an ocean, and anything you toss up, you feel like it’s gonna go in. It’s just so much fun.”
How was the Pacers guard able to get hot from behind the arc late in crunch time? “Got too much airspace,” the head coach said. “And some of it is transition, some of it is coming off pindowns, some of it is communication. Want to take a look at the film.”
Hart pointed the finger at a “lack of communication” in defending a guy who entered the night shooting 48.2 percent from three in 10 playoff games (up from his season average of 43.1 percent).
“Defensively, we let off the gas, the intensity and physicality wasn’t there,” Hart said, adding that on offense it “looked like we were playing not to lose.”
“We didn’t do what we needed to do,” Karl-Anthony Towns, who had 35 points and 12 rebounds and was the lone Knicks starter to have a positive plus-minus (nine) in 39 minutes, said.
Turnovers bite the hosts all night, including in overtime when the Knicks committed four of them. For the game, the total was 15, with Indiana profiting from them to the tune of 27 points.
“The turnovers were costly and they converted them into easy buckets,” Thibodeau said. “They started off the game in a good rhythm and then we did a much better as the half went on. And then, down the stretch, we didn’t do what we needed to do.”
This story was almost a different one.
Thibodeau was asked about deciding to start the fourth quarter with Brunson in the game despite his four fouls, and he didn’t elaborate beyond saying it was a “coach’s decision.”
And, who could blame the Knicks’ top man on the bench for sticking with his closer at the start of crunchtime with his team up by just three in a game the Knicks led for long stretches but never truly pulled away?
While Brunson scored the quarter’s first four points for New York, he lasted just 1:55 before he was relegated to the bench with the lead down to two.
The Knicks picked up their leader by going on a 14-0 run over the next 2:43 of game time – OG Anunoby had a quick five, Miles McBride added two from the line, Towns put in five straight, before Anunoby’s layup forced a second Indiana timeout. New York won the Brunson-less five minutes of play by 11 points, and soon after he entered, it was his step-back three that gave them the 14-point lead with 2:51 to play.
The story should have been a familiar one: It should have been a familiar one: Over the last 27 postseasons, NBA teams 0-970 when down by 14 points or more in the final 2:50 of regulation, per Keerthika Uthayakumar.
“They made shots, we didn’t,”Anunoby said. “We made some mistakes, missed some free throws.”
Towns added: “We played 46 good minutes. Those two minutes is where we lost the game. And that’s on all of us.”
NBA teams are now 1-970 when down 14 or more in the final 2:50 of regulation.
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