Who will be the X Factor in the Pacers-Knicks Eastern Conference Finals?
The Eastern Conference Finals between the Knicks and Pacers might get tight. Here are the players who we think might be able to break through and tilt the series.
NEW YORK — For the second consecutive game, the New York Knicks were left searching for answers.
The Pacers once more stunned the Knicks on their home court, sprinting to a commanding 2-0 lead Friday night in the Eastern Conference finals with a 114-109 win at Madison Square Garden. All postseason, slow starts in both halves have plagued this team. Friday was more of the same.
The starting lineup — a group that led the NBA in the regular season in minutes played, points, rebounds, assists and just about every major metric — is a combined -50 in plus-minus across the 14 games New York has played this postseason. That clears the second-worst unit by 16 points.
“I’m not sure, man,” forward Mikal Bridges said when asked to sum up what has gone wrong. “I think it’s maybe a defensive thing. … You’ve got to talk to each other off the jump, be physical off the jump. I think maybe we’re just playing a little too soft in the beginning of the halves. Yeah, I’m not sure.”
This, unquestionably, is not the time of the season to be playing soft, particularly on defense.
The Knicks suddenly face a daunting scenario, needing to win four of the next five games, the next two coming in Indianapolis, in order to reach their first NBA Finals since 1999. In NBA history, teams that have raced to a 2-0 lead in conference finals have a combined record of 76-6. And if this is indeed where New York’s season unravels, Bridges is correct, one fatal flaw can be blamed above all others: the Knicks have proven incapable of picking up the Pacers in transition.
Several times Friday, as Tyrese Halliburton or Andrew Nembhard or any other Pacer ballhandler pushed the ball up the court, New York often lost track of Pacers trailing the action, leading to high-percentage shots or kickouts to open players.
No Pacer was more effective in slipping through New York’s transition defense than forward Pascal Siakam, who dropped a playoff career-high 39 points on a hyper-efficient 15-of-23 shooting night.
Siakam scored Indiana’s first 11 points, and two of his first three buckets came in transition; one was a scooping layup in which Knicks forward Josh Hart failed to help Bridges and another was a wide open dunk following a New York turnover, when the Knicks completely lost sight of Siakam in transition.
“Whatever was out there,” Siakam said, “I just took it.”
That beginning set the tone for the rest of the game.
The Pacers doubled up the Knicks on fastbreak points, 14-7, though there were plenty of other baskets on second and third actions, cuts to the basket that materialized off of the Knicks being unsettled in their defensive sets.
“They do a really good job of moving the ball and screening the ball, forcing you into those mistakes,” Hart said. “We have to be more sound defensively, guarding the first action and second action, but also the third. We’re down 0-2, it’s a tough place to be in, but we can’t be having blown coverages.”
That this comes after Wednesday’s game, when Indiana blitzed New York in the fourth quarter with speed and pace in transition, furthers the concern the Knicks should carry headed into Sunday’s Game 3 (8 p.m. ET, TNT).
There is no scenario in which the Knicks claw back into this series without tighter, more physical, more assertive defense.
After the game, the Knicks stressed confidence that they could get there. All-Star point guard and captain Jalen Brunson was the most vocal in expressing that.
“I mean, we’re in the conference finals,” Brunson said. “Like, nothing else matters right now. We have a game every other day. We’re fighting. We’re in a very high-stakes moment. So the mental focus, everything has to be there. There can be no question about it.”
