NEW YORK — On Wednesday, just before the clock struck midnight, New York Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson sat down at the podium to take questions on yet another improbable comeback.
But this time, the mentally tough New York club — which staged a trio of unthinkable victories after trailing by double digits in its series with the Boston Celtics — found itself on the wrong end of the spectacle.
With just under three minutes to play and with the roar of their Madison Square Garden crowd behind them, the Knicks led the Indiana Pacers by 14 points. But through an array of defensive mistakes and costly turnovers, they lost in overtime 138-135 to open the Eastern Conference finals on the sourest of notes.
By their own admission, the defeat stemmed from the Knicks failing to run through the finish line.
“Defensively, we let off the gas. The intensity and physicality weren’t there,” wing Josh Hart said. “Offensively, we were playing slower, and more stagnant. It looked like we were playing not to lose.”
Said center Karl-Anthony Towns, who finished with 35 points and 12 rebounds: “There’s a lot of things we did good and we put ourselves in position to win. We played 46 good minutes. Those two minutes [are] where we lost the game, and that’s on all of us.”
It’s hard to imagine how those 170 seconds could have been any worse for New York.
Needing perhaps a single stop to close the game out, the Knicks couldn’t get one. The Pacers managed to shoot 6-for-6 over that span; five of those makes were 3-pointer, and four of them came from Aaron Nesmith, who caught fire to finish the contest with 30 points.
“He got too much airspace,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said afterward.
The only Indiana basket during that stretch that wasn’t a trey — Tyrese Haliburton‘s miracle jumper, which bounced high off the rim before falling through the net at the regulation horn — looked like it might have been one, too. Had it been, the Pacers would have won in regulation. But replays clarified that his foot was on the line, giving the Knicks something of a reprieve.
However, the Knicks faltered in overtime as well. Down 136-135 with 20 seconds left, New York seemed to want to foul the Pacers in hopes of getting the ball back. But they flubbed that plan, and ex-Knick Obi Toppin then got a dunk that was far too easy, leaving the Knick players looking at each other like strangers after the clear miscommunication on that end of the floor.
The club had one last possession to try and tie the score but Brunson and Towns each missed 3s in the final 10 seconds, sealing Indiana’s comeback.
It was a wasted effort by the Knicks. Things looked troublesome for them when, with 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Brunson — who would finish with a game-high 43 points — was forced to sub out with five personal fouls.
New York led 94-92 at that point but managed to go on a 14-0 run over the ensuing 2½-minute stretch, giving them a 16-point advantage while knowing that Brunson would return soon. The Garden was electric as it looked like the Pacers had finally run out of answers.
But things fell apart for Brunson and the Knicks, leaving them with a confounding loss that will evoke comparisons to the Pacers’ comeback in 1995 during the final 10 seconds of Game 1 — a stretch in which Reggie Miller logged eight points in nine seconds at the Garden. Indiana stole that contest to open the series before returning to MSG to close things in Game 7, a Knicks defeat that ended the Pat Riley era.
Bringing it back to the current day, the question of how close games would play out was always one to watch in the series. Both the Pacers and Knicks logged a pair of victories after coming back from 20-point deficits during the first two rounds of the playoffs. Brunson entered Wednesday having made the most clutch-time baskets this postseason, while Haliburton had hit the most shots in the final minute of clutch games.
The Pacers landed the first blow — and undoubtedly left the Knicks a bit wounded — in this first go-round.
“In the playoffs, when you win, it’s the best thing ever,” said Brunson, who had seven turnovers and acknowledged he needed to do more to take care of the ball. “When you lose, it’s the worst thing ever.”
Now, Brunson and the Knicks are tasked with regrouping so they don’t find themselves with an even worse feeling on Friday: Heading to Indianapolis down 2-0.
