Knicks-Pacers' new chapter has our attention after riveting Game 1
The Knicks’ Donte DiVincenzo reacts after hitting the go-ahead basket against the Pacers in the fourth quarter during Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals at Madison Square Garden on Monday. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
What did you expect?
Did you think the Indiana Pacers were just going to roll over? Did you think they were going to be intimidated by the way the Knicks went into Philadelphia and closed out the series against a not-100% Joel Embiid in the first round? Did you expect they were going to make this easy?
If it weren’t for some late-game heroics, the Knicks could very well have lost home-court advantage on Monday night. Instead, another drama-laden chapter was written in the history of the Knicks-Pacers rivalry. In this edition, it was the Villanova trio of Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart who pulled the Knicks across the finish line by coming up with big plays in the fourth quarter.
As a result, the Knicks defeated the Pacers, 121-117, at Madison Square Garden to take a 1-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Brunson scored 21 of his 43 points in the fourth quarter. DiVincenzo hit the tiebreaking three-pointer with 40 seconds left and finished with 25, 21 in the second half. And Hart, who again played all 48 minutes, scored a playoff career-high 24 points and added 13 rebounds and eight assists.
The Knicks needed every bit of those heroics to get past a deep Pacers team that controlled the game for three quarters and had a nine-point lead early in the fourth quarter.
“The bottom line is whatever we have to do at the end, find a way to win,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Whether it’s taking a charge, diving on the floor, coming up with a loose ball, getting a deflection, getting a blocked shot and putting it up the floor. Obviously, it was a choppy game for us, so we’ve got to clean things up.”
Added Brunson: “We knew we could have played better tonight. They had our number for most of the night. We just made a couple more plays down the stretch.”
The win was the most recent edition in the fierce rivalry between the two franchises that dominated most of the 1990s. The teams met three straight times from 1993-95 and again from 1998-2000 — when Thibodeau and Indiana’s Rick Carlisle were assistants with their current teams.
Larry Brown, NBA Hall of Famer and Long Island native, was the coach of the Pacers when the rivalry started. He was there in 1993 when John Starks head-butted Reggie Miller. He was there in 1994 when Miller threw the choke sign at Spike Lee. And he was there in 1995 when Miller scored eight points in 8.9 seconds.
“It’s going to be a great series,” Brown told Newsday on Sunday from his home in Charlotte.
Brown’s ties to both teams run deep. He grew up a Knicks fan and can remember taking the train from Long Beach to the old Garden, where he would pay 50 cents for a ticket. He coached the Knicks during the 2005-06 season. Having had a home near the Villanova campus for years, he closely followed the careers of the Knicks’ Villanova trio of Brunson, DiVincenzo and Hart.
Brown was expecting the same kind of intensity between the two teams in this series, which he believes will be all about guards Brunson and Tyrese Haliburton.
“It’s going to be critical to see which point guard prevails,” said Brown, a former point guard himself. “The point guards are so different. Jalen, I hate to say he’s score-first because he’ll make the right play and he’s very unselfish. The Knicks, though, really need him to score.”
Score is exactly what Brunson did again. His 43 points made him the fourth player in NBA history to have four straight 40-point games in the postseason. He joined Hall of Famers Jerry West, who had six consecutive 40-point games in the postseason, and Michael Jordan and Bernard King (both with four).
“We just find a way,” Brunson said. “No matter what it is, we just give each other confidence to make sure we can get the job done. So it’s nothing in particular. It’s just the group of guys we have, we give each other confidence and move forward together.”
Brunson outplayed Haliburton, the NBA’s assists leader who finished with six points and eight assists after being listed as questionable with back spasms.
“We just tried to make it as difficult as possible on him,” said DiVincenzo, who was one of the primary defenders on Haliburton. “He’s an All-Star for a reason. You can’t stop a player like him. He’s going to make adjustments.”
And so are the Knicks, who haven’t made it past the second round of the playoffs since 2000, when they lost to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals.
“This is a group that wants to win,” Thibodeau said. “Tonight, we just found a way.”
In a previous version of this story, Larry Brown's years coaching the Knicks were incorrect.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.