There were under two minutes to play at the Garden on Friday night and the Knicks were about to do to the Pacers at the end of Game 2 what the Pacers had done to them at the end of Game 1. It had been 110-100 for the Pacers but just like that, blink of Timothee Chalamet’s eyes, Indiana’s lead was down to a point. The Knicks were on a heater now and so was the Garden.
The Knicks were going to come back again in the fourth quarter the way they kept doing that against the Celtics. Jalen Brunson was going to save them again, and save the season. That bounce of the ball out of the retired jerseys on Tyrese Haliburton’s shot on Wednesday wasn’t going to be the basketball version of Freddie Freeman’s Game 1 grand slam against the Yankees last October, a Game 1 shot from which the Yankees never recovered.
Brunson had made a 3 to make it 110-105. Then he made a tough drive for one of his floaters in traffic. Then a sweet feed to Josh Hart after the Pacers ran everybody except Reggie Miller at him. Pacers 110, Knicks 109.
“Anything is possible in this building,” Reggie Miller himself said, and he ought to know.
But then it all changed in a few seconds, the way Game 1 did.
Brunson committed a bad foul on Aaron Nesmith on the inbounds play after Hart’s layup, grabbing his jersey and going over the top on a pass that Nesmith was going to have a hard time catching, and might have gone out of bounds. Two free throws for Nesmith. Now it was 112-109. The Knicks rushed the ball up the court after the second one. Brunson rushed a 3-pointer — clearly afraid they were going to foul — right after he got past the “Chase” logo. Myles Turner rebound. He got fouled, made two, it was 114-109, the Knicks were down 0-2 to the Pacers. And the reality for Knicks fans in the house was that they might have seen the last game their team is going to play there until next season.
The Pacers were better again, and not just in these two games. If you go off the record, they have been better than the Knicks for the past five months. They were 16-18 on Jan. 1 because of a lot of injuries, and the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference at the time. Since then, and through Friday night, their record is 44-16. Their record in the postseason going into Game 3 in Indianapolis, is 9-2. You know who has a better record than that? Nobody, and that includes the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Pacers were largely overlooked, certainly around here, while they were making the run they’ve made, and clearly under-seeded when the playoffs began.
“A lot of games are determined by one possession,” said Josh Hart, who looks more gassed than anybody after chasing the Pacers around for two games.
“They force you into mistakes,” Hart said.
And Hart, the glue guy and as much a gamer as any of them, said this:
“We have to be more sound defensively to guard the first action, second action, but also the third action.”
Listen: The Knicks can absolutely go to Indy and get Game 3. They have been a terrific road team so far in this playoffs, having won five of the seven they’ve played away from Madison Square Garden. It’s a good thing, because their record at home in this postseason is 3-5. If you go back to Game 7 against the Pacers last season, when the Pacers turned a Game 7 – in New York, at the Garden – into a light scrimmage, they have lost six of their last nine postseason games at home. Again: Some mecca.
But: If they can get Game 3, the way the Cavs did at Gainbridge Fieldhouse after they lost two games to the Pacers to start their second-round series, then the Knicks will at least get the chance to push all their chips to the middle of the table for Game 4.
They can tell themselves that, the Knicks can. They can tell themselves that with everything that happened down the stretch in Game 1, when Nesmith went all Reggie on them, if they had just made one more free throw at the end – from Karl-Anthony Towns or OG Anunoby – they would have won Game 1, and then who knows how Game 2 would have played out.
Of course Brunson has looked like an immortal with the ball in his hands, game after game, shot after shot, already a giant in Knicks history. And Towns has produced 55 points in 67 minutes. It doesn’t change the fact that neither one of them guards nearly enough. It doesn’t change the fact that Tom Thibodeau had to sit down Towns for 20 minutes Friday night because of the way Mitchell Robinson was giving him real defense, often more outside than inside. Or that the minus number when the Knicks starters are on the floor is a little bit nuts.
“We have to execute better,” Towns kept saying after the game, over and over again.
The Celtics, even before Jayson Tatum, had a lot of miles on the odometer. The Pacers are different. They young, and fast, and hungry, and deep, and unafraid, and don’t get tired, ever. If you were a Knicks fan watching Friday night’s game, you know you had to be worried that Tyrese Haliburton and Nesmith had scored hardly at all, and the Pacers were only down by three points. And when it was all right there for the Knicks at the end, when they had the chance to steal one the way the Pacers had on Wednesday might, the Pacers stood up to them and stood right in there at the Garden.
Again.
In Game 1, the obvious heroes were Nesmith, making all those 3-pointers, and Haliburton nearly making one of his own at the buzzer in regulation, the ball taking its sweet time as it floated down from in front of the 24-second clock before finally dropping dead from exhaustion through the basket.
Friday it was Pascal Siakam, the guy in the gym with an NBA title on his resume from when he was with the Raptors, doing the scoring for the Pacers, especially in the first half when they needed him the most, on his way to 39 points that felt like a hundred on this night.
It is difficult to believe this Knicks team, after all we’ve seen from it, beating the Celtics after that rock fight against the Pistons, will go down without a fight. But Friday night’s fight was right there for them to win in the last round. Then Brunson committed that foul. A few seconds later, he came down and another 3 from him was in the air, only this one didn’t go down, because they all don’t, even for a clutch player like him. The last time the Knicks were in the Eastern Conference finals, the Pacers got them. All this time later, they are set up to get them again. It’s only Game 3 in Indy Sunday night. It will feel like Game 7 for the New York Knicks.
Broadway between 70th and 73rd, Overrate who? and the cozy studio apartment in the Bronx
Wait, the Yankees lost to the Rockies Friday night?
If they’re already naming streets after the Knicks for winning a couple of rounds in the playoffs, guess what, the new name for Broadway is Clyde Way.
But as luck would have it, though, we already have a bridge with Willis’s name on it.
There has never been a time, not once, when a fast start for the Yankees didn’t have them halfway to the Canyon of Heroes.
There isn’t a manager in baseball, not one, any better than A.J. Hinch.
Some as good?
You bet.
But none better.
Even with their pitching staff having exploded the way it has for the Dodgers, after Friday night there were just two teams with more wins: Hinch’s Tigers and the Phillies.
So we’re supposed to give the college football people the game ball because they figured out that the best four teams should get the top four seeds in the tournament?
Tyrese Haliburton’s shot at the end of regulation the other night really was kind of the Reggie Miller of Larry Johnsons, right?
By the way?
No do-overs for all genius players who voted Haliburton the most overrated player in the league.
Now that Ronald Acuna, Jr. is back with the Braves, the Mets might want to think about looking back and wondering when the Braves might be gaining on them.
NBA coaches should have this tattooed behind their eyeballs, in case they forget the next time:
Do Not Waste Challenges Early.
Sometimes, I swear, it looks like they challenge calls just to placate the player who feels he was done wrong.
Are we absolutely certain some of those cheapie homers at Yankee Stadium should count for a whole run?
Oh, come on.
We kid because we love.
Well, kind of.
We saw the other night at Fenway Park just how much of a grinder Kodai Senga is.
It would be a pretty great thing for Giants fans if Jaxson Dart turns out to be the real thing.
Through Friday night, the Yankees were the only team in the AL East with a record over .500.
It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and what was once the best division in baseball still looks softer than soft ice cream.
Hey, Juan Soto is going to hit, because he always has.
And I don’t believe he’s in a lousy mood because he’s having Met remorse, I think he’s just embarrassed about the way he’s played so far, and you would be, too.
But after a third of the season, there might be some Mets fans thinking you don’t get nearly as much for $765 million as you used to.
