Knicks-Pacers: 5 takeaways from Indiana’s stunning comeback in Game 1 – NBA
Source: Heat.com
Down 17 in the 4th and 14 with little more than 3 minutes left in regulation, Indiana rallies to win in overtime.
Down 14 with 3 minutes left, Tyrese Haliburton’s buzzer-beater sends Game 1 to overtime and helps Indiana stun New York.
NEW YORK — The Indiana Pacers do not play conventional NBA basketball in either their style of play or the way they win.
Their victory in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was a lot more than unconventional. It was one of the craziest playoff games Madison Square Garden has ever seen, a 138-135 overtime thriller to edge the New York Knicks in which Indiana trailed by as many as 17 points in the fourth quarter.
Aaron Nesmith pulled the Pacers back, draining six 3-pointers in the final five minutes of regulation. The Knicks missed two big free throws. Tyrese Haliburton sent the game to overtime with a buzzer-beater that bounced high off the heel of the rim before falling through the net. Then, Andrew Nembhard made some big plays in the extra period.
A miraculous win for the Pacers. A heartbreaker for the Knicks, who had their share of miraculous comebacks against Boston in the last round.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Pacers improved to 7-0 in clutch games in the playoffs.
The Pacers’ offense is about ball and player movement, where everybody has opportunities to get buckets. Through the first two rounds, all five of their starters were averaging between 14.6 and 18.8 points per game.
But as Indiana came back from 17 points down with just over six minutes left in the fourth quarter on Wednesday, the offense wasn’t so egalitarian. The Pacers scored an amazing 31 points on their final 13 possessions of regulation, and Nesmith accounted for 20 of the 31. He shot 6-for-6 from 3-point range, also draining a huge pair of free throws when the Knicks fouled him with 12.4 seconds left so that he couldn’t attempt another three for the tie.
The first 3-pointer came with the Pacers putting Jalen Brunson into an action. Brunson hedged Nesmith’s screen for Haliburton, and then got caught in Thomas Bryant’s flare screen. Karl-Anthony Towns (Bryant’s defender) was hanging back at the free throw line, and Nesmith got a clean look at the top of the arc:
Towns was again slow to react on the next one, a pull-up from the left wing off an Obi Toppin screen.
After a Haliburton 3-pointer got the Pacers within 11, the Pacers again took advantage of Brunson. Ben Sheppard set a screen for Haliburton that Brunson hedged, help had to come when Sheppard rolled into the paint, and Nesmith was left alone on the weak side:
Now, he was rolling. And now, he was shot-hunting. Another pull-up before OG Anunoby could switch out, and the Pacers were down six with a little less than a minute left. After a Towns bucket seemingly stemmed the tide, Siakam set Nesmith up with a handoff and, again, Anunoby was a little too slow to contest.
“Each shot that he made,” Haliburton said, “just kept giving us more confidence that we could really win this game.”
Still down five with less than 30 seconds left, the Pacers needed more. And they got it when Nesmith ran off a pin-down and pulled up over a helpless Josh Hart. Two-point game with 22.1 seconds left.
The Knicks did their part by missing two free throws, and Haliburton hit the audacious stepback to tie the game at the buzzer. But Nesmith’s ridiculous shooting is the thing that should stand out most from this crazy game.
Nesmith finished with 30 points, tying his career high (regular season or playoffs). His eight 3-pointers (on nine attempts) were the most he’s ever made. Plus, he did that while handling the toughest assignment on the other end of the floor.
“To do what he did today,” Haliburton said, “while also having to guard Jalen Brunson for, probably, 30 minutes is very difficult to do. What Aaron Nesmith did today can’t be talked about enough.”
The playoffs are funny because they’re high stakes, but small sample sizes. For six months, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics were the two best teams in the Eastern Conference by a wide margin, yet neither reached the conference finals.
Nesmith is a career 38% 3-point shooter, but he’s now 35-for-65 (54%) in the playoffs, and the Pacers won Game 1 because he was 6-for-6 in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter. On average, a 38% shooter should make two out of six shots, and if Nesmith does that, the Knicks are up 1-0 in this series.
If the Pacers reach the NBA Finals, it will be because they’ve shot ridiculously well on a small number of possessions. They’re now 6-0 in playoff games that were within five points in the last five minutes, having scored an amazing 69 points on 43 clutch offensive possessions, a rate of 1.6 points per possession.
That certainly isn’t sustainable over a heavier sample size, and the Pacers certainly don’t want to be facing any more 17-point deficits in the fourth quarter. But this was the one miracle they needed in this series.
The Knicks hand over a 17-p
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