The semifinal series-opener between the Knicks and Pacers goes down to the wire at MSG!
NEW YORK — There have been four games at Madison Square Garden in this postseason, and all four have been within three points in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter. It’s the perfect environment for thrilling basketball, and that’s all it’s seen in the last 17 days.
The latest instance was the Knicks’ 121-117 victory in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series against the Pacers on Monday. These 48 minutes were a lot different than the Knicks’ first-round series against the 76ers, but in the end, very much the same.
Once again, Donte DiVincenzo hit the biggest shot of the night, a 29-foot catch-and-shoot 3-pointer that gave the Knicks a 3-point lead with 39.4 seconds left. Once again, Josh Hart played all 48 minutes and grabbed some huge offensive rebounds. And once again, Jalen Brunson scored at least 40 points.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Knicks took a 1-0 series lead.
1. Brunson joins elite company with fourth straight 40-point game
There’s not much left to say about Brunson at this point. He’s a relentless offensive player with a bevy of moves to get to the free throw line or create just enough space to squeeze off his shot.
He shot 14-for-14 from the line and 14-for-26 from the field on Monday, totaling 43 points in 43 1/2 minutes. That made him the fourth player in NBA history with four straight 40-point games in the playoffs, joining Jerry West (six straight games), Bernard King (also with the Knicks) and Michael Jordan (in the 1993 Finals).
Brunson saved his best work for the fourth quarter, when the Knicks scored an amazing 39 points on 24 possessions (1.63 per). The 6-foot-2 point guard scored 21 of those 39, with some classic Brunson buckets down the stretch.
A stepback jumper over Andrew Nembhard to put the Knicks up four with less than three minutes left:
And a turnaround in traffic to tie the game with 1:14 to go:
“[He’s] as elite of a one-on-one player as there is,” Pacers guard T.J. McConnell said. “He’s playing at a really high level, so we gotta find ways to make it even tougher on him. You’re not going to shut a guy like that down. You just gotta make it really difficult.”
With the score still tied on the next possession, the Pacers did try to make it more difficult, finally sending a double-team at another Brunson isolation vs. Nembhard. But Aaron Nesmith’s help wasn’t aggressive enough, allowing Brunson to make an easy pass to DiVincenzo. Then Tyrese Haliburton was a little too slow to rotate off the corner:
The Pacers can certainly clean some things up on that end of the floor, and that goes beyond their defense on Brunson.
2. Pacers play with pace
It became very clear early on that, in regard to the other end of the floor, this series would be a stark contrast to the Knicks’ first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey presented their own challenges for the Knicks. Embiid was tough to keep off the foul line and Maxey was near impossible to contain off the dribble.
But the Sixers’ offense was rather deliberate and the ball never moved as quickly as it does when the Pacers are attacking. Entering this series, Indiana led the playoffs in both ball movement (397 passes per 24 minutes of possession) and player movement (11.8 miles traveled per 24 minutes of possession), and that movement was on display throughout Game 1.
According to Synergy tracking, the Pacers scored 28 points in transition, more than the Sixers (who averaged 18.3) had in any of their six games against New York.
Early in the third quarter following a Knicks bucket, Haliburton threw a long pass ahead that, after three more passes, turned into a wide-open corner 3 for Pascal Siakam. Earlier in the game, they got another wide-open 3 (that missed) after a made free throw.
Pace isn’t just about how quickly a team goes from one end of the floor to the other. It’s also about how quick its actions are in its half-court offense. The ball doesn’t stick with this team and half-court pace will continue to be a challenge for a Knicks defense that hasn’t been quite as good in the playoffs as it was in the regular season.
3. Possession
This series may come down to retaining possession of the basketball.
The Knicks do that by crashing the glass. Through Monday, they’ve retained 36.7% of available offensive rebounds, what would be the best mark for any team that’s played more than one playoff series since Tom Thibodeau’s 2010-11 Bulls.
The Pacers did a great job on the glass in the first half of Game 1, holding New York to just two offensive rebounds and three second-chance points. But they couldn’t keep a relentless opponent down all night, and the Knicks turned six offensive boards (plus loose-ball fouls and rebounds that went out of bounds) into 13 second-chance points in the second half.
Hart had the most impressive board of the night, coming from the left corner to snatch the ball away from Siakam with five minutes left. Siakam fouled him and Hart registered one of those 16 second-chance points at the line:
The Pacers, meanwhile, retain possession by not turning the ball over. In the first round against Milwaukee, they had the highest assist/turnover ratio (3.07) for any team in any series in at least 30 years.
Through three quarters of Game 1, they had a ratio of 8.33 (25/3). But then they committed more turnovers in the fourth quarter (five) than they had through the first three, with the most painful being an illegal screen by Myles Turner with Indiana down one and less than 15 seconds left.
4. T.J. McConnell, offensive force
It’s possible that McConnell wouldn’t be in the league if it weren’t for the Sixers’ “Process,” where good players were traded out of Philadelphia for future assets and fringe players were given a chance to play for one of the worst teams in NBA history. McConnell, undrafted in 2015, was one of those fringe players.
But he earned his way into being a rotation regular as the Sixers improved over the years, and he’s been the same for the Pacers for the past five seasons. Still, he was never much of a scorer … until now.
McConnell averaged 7.1 points (11.6 per 36 minutes) through his first eight seasons. This season, those averages were career-high marks of 10.2 per game and 20.3 per 36, including 13.8 and 25.2 after the All-Star break.
In Game 1, McConnell was maybe the toughest individual for the Knicks to guard. He pushed the ball in transition and aggressively looked to score:
McConnell finished with 18 points (his third most in 29 career playoff games) with a plus-9 in 22 minutes. But he wasn’t on the floor down the stretch, when the game got away from the Pacers.
5. Every shot, every gamble, every foul counts
The Pacers had the ball, down just one point, with less than 15 seconds to go. And consider the following:
1. The Pacers had seemingly closed the first half on a 9-0 run, only for Isaiah Hartenstein to sink a heave from beyond the mid-court line at the buzzer.
“We had nothing going for us,” Thibodeau said. “That gave us a little hope.”
2. The Knicks got two free points in the fourth quarter on away-from-the-play fouls, where the Pacers committed a foul before the ball was inbounded. The first was the result of a great fake by DiVincenzo, and the second allowed New York to go up four in the final seconds and prevent Indiana from having a chance to tie. Essentially, that was the worst thing that the Pacers could have done in that situation.
3. But it wasn’t their only bad decision of the fourth quarter. “We had one play where one of our guys took a wild run to try to gamble and steal the ball,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said, “and it turned into a four-point play for them.”
That was Nesmith, who left Hart in an effort to steal the ball from Hartenstein. He didn’t get there, Hart got a lane to the basket, scored, drew a foul, missed the ensuing free throw, rebounded his own miss and put it back to get the Knicks within one with a little less than six minutes left.
4. Just before DiVincenzo’s go ahead 3-pointer, Nesmith was called for a kicked-ball violation when the ball hit his hand, not his foot. The Pacers would have had the loose ball, but the call was made, kicked balls can’t be reviewed, the Knicks kept possession and they took the lead on the ensuing play.
“It’s not just the last minute or two,” Carlisle said about the importance of every possession. “It’s the whole game, the whole fourth quarter. This is a great experience for our guys. It comes at a cost. It’s no fun. But we’re going to have to learn some things for Game 2.”
Game 2 is Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, TNT).
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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