NEW YORK – In one sense, in Rick Carlisle’s opinion, basketball can be extremely complicated.
“NBA games are games with five or six thousand events that happen throughout the game,” the Indiana Pacers coach told reporters before Tuesday’s Game 5 at Madison Square Garden. “You know, any notion that a game is going to be – at this time of year, with the stakes as high as they are – going to be the same from game to game, is probably not going to happen.”
Except, of course, when it’s anything but complicated.
“Right now, it’s very simple,” he said. “If you don’t hit someone and get the ball, you’re going to lose.”
And… well, about that:
The Knicks nailed the Pacers early Tuesday night, with Isaiah Hartenstein driving in his first offensive rebound just 61 seconds into the game. They hit Indiana often, pulling down 20 offensive rebounds — 12 of them corralled by Hartenstein, a career high for the center — leading to 26 second-chance points. They hit the Carlisle club repeatedly, taking a 62-36 lead in paint scoring – just over half their total in a 121-91 return of service win – thanks largely to hammering the visitors over and over again. time with his No. 1 offensive option.
On the other hand, the situation has been pretty simple in this second-round series: When Jalen Brunson looks like Jalen Brunson, the Knicks win; when he doesn’t, they don’t. And after lacking drive, sustain, balance and comfort during New York’s two losses in Indianapolis, Brunson — perhaps the beneficiary of his early exit in Sunday’s Game 4 loss, followed by two nights in his own bed — once again He once looked like the NBA All-Incinerator who roasted these Pacers on this court in Games 1 and 2.
Brunson left his mark on the game from the start, scoring 10 points on five made shots in the first quarter – just one less shot than he had in all of Game 4. From there, the Knicks’ All-Star point guard completely took over, scoring or assist for 23 points in the second quarter; the Pacers, as a team, produced just 22 in the frame, with New York taking a 15-point halftime lead that they would never relinquish.
“As much as you talk about him — and you talk about him a lot, and rightfully so — it’s not enough,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of Brunson.
Maybe it’s not enough because, right now, we’re running out of superlatives to do it justice.
Brunson torched every coverage Carlisle and company played against them on Tuesday – one-offs with Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard, “show” coverage with Tyrese Haliburton briefly closing in on him before trying to run back to his man (and out from Brunson’s line of fire), blitzes, traps, double teams, you name it – on his way to 44 points on 18-of-35 shooting.
This is Brunson’s fifth 40-point game of the 2024 NBA playoffs. Since 1980only LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson and Knicks legend Bernard King have had more in a single playoff run.
“We all expect him to be almost superhuman every night,” Thibodeau said. “You know, he’s an incredible player. It is charged every night. He’s the focal point of everyone’s game plan… He’s like a machine. Every day he arrives locked up, that’s what he’s going to do. He’ll be ready for the next game, he’ll be ready for the next game.”
Given how he looked in Games 3 and 4, as he battled the soreness in his right foot that took him out of the first half of Game 2, it seemed far from certain that he would be ready for the next game. But there he was on Tuesday, giving every Pacers defender he faced nightmares – and the Knicks everything they needed to continue their dream season and move within one win of the franchise’s first Eastern Conference Finals berth since 2000. .
“You always have confidence that he’s going to bounce back,” Thibodeau said.
Brunson wasn’t willing to attribute his recovery to any specific change in game plan, approach or strategy: “Just finding a way. That’s really it. There is nothing special about it. We just needed to do it.” But Thibodeau he did Find a way to help get your superstar engine back on track.
The adjustments with which Indiana made Brunson’s life much more difficult in Games 3 and 4 – not only moving the longer, stronger, more physical Nesmith into him as their primary defender, but showing aggressive help behind the play off by Precious Achiuwa, the non-throwing forward Thibodeau started in place of the injured OG Anunoby – he had less success in Game 5. A big reason? Achiuwa was no longer starting.
“Obviously, we were disappointed with how we played in Game 4 in Indiana and we had to respond and fix some things,” Thibodeau said. “But I felt like we were in the mud in that game, you know? Sometimes that happens, and then it’s not necessarily what happened, it’s how we react to it.”
His answer: Downsize and slide backup guard Miles “Deuce” McBride into the starting lineup.
The objective was twofold. On offense, switching to McBride inserted a more threatening shooter than Achiuwa (McBride shot 41% from 3-point range during the regular season and shot 37% in these playoffs) capable of punishing Indiana for attacking Brunson too aggressively, also as a high-level ball handler, more capable of making plays in space if the Pacers tried to get the ball out of Brunson’s hands again. That McBride is a willing screener — and that he would be protected by Tyrese Haliburton, who torched the Knicks in two games in Indiana and who the Pacers really I don’t want to protect Brunson if they can help it – it didn’t hurt either.
“Yeah, I think trying to get him going is really important for us,” McBride said after the game. “We feel like Jalen on a lot of people is a mismatch, but trying to get him, obviously, on Tyrese to, you know, maybe slow him down on the other side is also important.”
“Slowing him down on the other end” was the second half of McBride’s mission in Game 5. The third-year guard chased the Pacers All-Star across the court, lifting him a full 94 feet and trying to deny him the ball at every opportunity.
“He had a big impact in both games in Indy — just scoring, being able to facilitate,” said McBride, who finished with 17 points on 7-of-15 shooting and four assists in 40 minutes in his first career playoff game. “I just wanted to limit your touches as much as possible [as possible]because you can’t do any of those things if you don’t have the ball.”
With McBride protecting him all over the court and pressing every touch when he he did get the ball, the Indiana orchestrator lacked oxygen and opportunity. After racking up 89 points on 60 field goal attempts in his previous three games, Haliburton managed just 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting with five assists in 34 minutes of work – during which the Knicks defeated his Pacers by 22 points. .
“I just need to do a better job of being aggressive,” Haliburton said. “I think we’re back to Game 1 – I said the same thing after Game 1. It’s more about me than what anyone else is doing… I have to watch the film to really see where I can be better. I think it’s probably the ups and downs of each game, and sometimes you’re just trying to get a feel for the game. I just didn’t do what I was supposed to do today and I’ll be better in Game 6.”
The fact that the Pacers are now searching for answers represents a 180-degree change from the situation on Sunday night, when it appeared the Knicks could no longer rely on the recipe that gave them 50 wins, second place in the East and a Difficult first-round win over the 76ers. With Mitchell Robinson and OG Anunoby joining Julius Randle and Bojan Bogdanović on the injured list, it seemed like New York simply didn’t have enough healthy bodies capable of providing enough shots to keep Indiana honest, enough defensive steel to slow down the fastest in the NBA. enough offense and support for a version of Brunson who, working through a sore right foot, didn’t seem capable of surviving the firepower of the Pacers’ Haliburton-led offense twice more in a three-game run.
But then Tuesday came and it turned out that Brunson might still look like Brunson. And that, when left on an island without multiple help defenders sitting behind him, Nesmith is no more of a defender of Brunson than Kelly Oubre Jr. and Nicolas Batum turned out to be. And this, in McBride and exhumed mothball veteran Alec Burks, New York power just have enough ballhandling, plays and complementary shots to keep Indy’s defense honest. And that Hartenstein — now just the ninth player since 1977 to grab 12 offensive rebounds in a playoff game, according to Stathead, a list that includes the likes of Moses Malone, Shaquille O’Neal, Dennis Rodman and Knick legend Charles Oakley – could turn turned into an uncontrollable beast under glass that the likes of Myles Turner, Pascal Siakam, Isaiah Jackson and Obi Toppin simply couldn’t control.
“I just wanted to be more physical,” said Hartenstein, who had seven points, five defensive rebounds, five assists and one block in 31 minutes of work in the engine room. “I feel like in the Indiana games, I wasn’t playing like myself. I wasn’t being physical. I was letting them play how I play.”
In regaining control of that battle of physicality – absurd 48.1% offensive recovery rate, huge advantages in the possession battle and seemingly every loose ball – the Knicks regained control of the series and gave themselves two chances to finish off the Pacers. But as several Knicks said after the win, that momentum is only as good as tomorrow’s starting pitcher.
“One thing I learned in the playoffs is that one game doesn’t affect the next,” Brunson said. “So no matter what the situation is – whether you lose by one or by 30 – it has nothing to do with the next game. So honestly, as soon as we leave you here tonight, this will be over. It’s all about: How do we prepare for Game 6?”
For the Pacers, the answer better be to prepare for a close fight. Anything less and the season could be over before the weekend.
“They turned up the pressure tonight, and our pressure was pretty much non-existent,” Carlisle said. “We failed on many levels and therefore need to make some serious adjustments for Game 6.
“We need to get out of here and go home.”
