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The wildness of the first three games of the Knicks’ Eastern Conference Finals against the Pacers — the absurd Pacers comeback at MSG in game one, the mania of the end of game two, the Karl-Anthony Towns fourth-quarter explosion for the Knicks’ own absurd comeback in game three — may have obscured a fundamental fact about this whole series: The Pacers are a terrible matchup for the Knicks. It was true when the Pacers took out the Knicks in last year’s playoffs too. And it’s strange that we all forgot this.
It’s not that the Knicks are bad, or that the Pacers are so overwhelmingly dominant. (If the Pacers advance to the NBA Finals, they will be massive underdogs to likely opponent Oklahoma City.) It’s just that, while watching their pivotal game four in Indianapolis on Tuesday, it was impossible to notice how hard everything was for the Knicks. A team that needs games to be slower and uglier to have the best chance to win, the Knicks would fall behind, start to grind their way back, make a little bit of progress … and then Tyrese Haliburton, the incorrigible troll who was basically perfect on Tuesday night, would drain a three-pointer or find one of the Pacers’ seemingly endless number of shooters to drain one for him. It was to the Knicks’ credit that they were able to keep it as close as they did considering how difficult it was for them, how well the Pacers were playing on offense, and how few answers the Knicks seemed to have. But you don’t get credit for keeping it close in the playoffs. You just get a loss.
That loss is what the Knicks got on Tuesday, and they’re now down three to one and on the brink of elimination. The only thing that was different about Tuesday’s game was that it didn’t feature some wild comeback; it was just a normal game in which one team was better than the other. The Pacers played at their preferred tempo and style throughout — high-scoring, fast, and a little chaotic. That is not how the Knicks play, that is not how Tom Thibodeau coaches, and that is not how this entire franchise has been built in the Leon Rose era. The Knicks are a little plodding by nature, and that can work against a young Pistons team that hasn’t figured itself out yet, or a Celtics team struggling both with injuries and a post-championship identity. But the Pacers are hungry, deep, and, more than anything else, ascendant: They feel like this is their moment, and it’s starting to look like they may be right.
There is blame to go around with these Knicks. Jalen Brunson turned in a good performance on offense Wednesday, but remains a disaster defensively, particularly against a team as big and as fast as the Pacers. (The Knicks were outscored by 16 when Brunson was on the floor.) Karl-Anthony Towns played well but disappeared for stretches and, concerningly, banged his left knee multiple times. Josh Hart turned the ball over five times on a miserable night for the Knicks’ ball-handling, with the team totaling 17 turnovers against a team who will cook you if you give them extra possessions. Mitchell Robinson had his worst game of the postseason. Thibodeau never did seem to figure out a consistent rotation; he’s throwing everything at the wall right now.
The worrisome thing, though, is that he has really had no choice. The Knicks don’t have enough, at this particular moment, to beat the Pacers. That could change — the Pacers could go cold from the three-point line. Thibodeau could figure out a new way to hide Brunson on defense. Towns could have another nuclear game. The Garden could carry this team. Haliburton could get lost on the way there. But the general arc of this series is becoming clear: The Pacers have more than the Knicks do, and they’re good at the things that the Knicks aren’t built to counter. This isn’t over yet, but you can be forgiven for feeling that way.
