NEW YORK – As always, Knicks Nation was compelling and insightful as they watched their team lose Game 7 at Madison Square Garden to the Indiana Pacers.
“(Bleeping) bushes,” said one well-reasoned fan as he walked out of MSG in the final minutes of the 130-108 loss.
The home fans were bitterly disappointed. Nobody on this island believed the Pacers could get here and the Knicks, no matter how depleted they were, in a winner-take-all situation for a berth in the conference finals, as long as Jalen Brunson was healthy and New York could. He continues to grab handfuls of offensive rebounds. ESPN certainly seemed clear in its coverage plan. But the Pacers bowed their necks to show what they had learned and how they had grown over the past few months. They mocked the Knicks and their wealthy fans in the celebrity feud. They noted that few national reporters had been around for long this season. His coach seemed to delight in pointing out the lack of respect his team had suffered.
And Tyrese Haliburton arrived at the postgame press conference wearing a Reggie Miller hoodie, with Reg in the classic “Knicks choke” style, a tribute to the franchise's greatest player of all time and enfant terrible in Gotham City.
“I just like to be comfortable on the plane,” Haliburton said, tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Tyrese Haliburton wearing a Reggie Miller sweatshirt after winning Game 7 at the Garden 😈 pic.twitter.com/TKuOc3t1zu
– Indiana Pacers (@Pacers) May 19, 2024
Even by breaking the previous record for highest field goal percentage by a team in a Game 7, shooting an NBA playoff record 67 percent in the game: 53 of 79! – And he hit 13 of 24 three-pointers, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle returned, again and again, to the defense his team played when it mattered most.
“They changed the script,” Carlisle said. “They won the series with courage, guts and physical play. Pressing 94 feet. And that's how we also beat Milwaukee (in the first round). You have to give these guys a lot of credit, not for a total change, but for a very significant change in the attitude towards defense, the challenge, the importance of defense and what they did today. “I don’t want to do things about how to make shots.”
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Indeed, the Pacers' metamorphosis since the first month of the season, when Indy was cosmically bad on the defensive end, has been profound. It required the hard work of connecting and making more noise on defense. But it also required Indiana to step out of its comfort zone and put all its chips in the middle of the pack, acquiring Pascal Siakam from Toronto in mid-January in a three-team deal that also included New Orleans, with no guarantee after these playoffs in which the two-time All-Star and rising unrestricted free agent will remain.
“My focus going into the game was just getting everyone settled in,” Siakam said. The Athletic. “I came in aggressive, just to make sure everyone calmed down. Once everyone calmed down, (Haliburton) took over. And he can do it with the best in the game. And obviously the back and forth gets you going.”
Siakam made his first five shots from the floor en route to 20 points. Haliburton took three-pointers in the first quarter, including a deadly sprint to the left wing for a 26-foot shot in transition, giving him 11 points in less than two minutes. Indiana scored 39 in the first quarter and led 70-55 at halftime. The Pacers' offensive production was surprising for its integrity.
“It's just old-school thinking, that you can't play that fast in the playoffs,” Haliburton said. “But I think, opportunistically, you can do it. If we can get stops, of course we can.”
But Carlisle was right. Indiana may have had numerically better defensive nights against the Knicks in the series, but considering what was at stake in a road Game 7, this was Indiana's best defensive hour. Before Brunson left the game in the second half after breaking his left hand, he was just 6 of 17 from the field. TJ McConnell, again, was disruptive off the bench. And after being decisively beaten on the glass in the first two games of the series, Indy outscored New York in four of the last five games and won all four.
(Speaking of which: Man, the NBA is so bad at fixing games! It had Boston-New York on a platter, packed with potential sweet ratings gold, featuring the No. 1 and No. 8 television markets. And it allowed the Pacers They trampled the Knicks! He didn't foul Haliburton or Siakam And this continued a worrying trend six times, with San Antonio winning five titles between 1999 and 2014; He hasn't given New York a championship in more than five decades! If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, because many of you are screaming “conspiracy” this time of year: If the NBA's mission is to fix playoff games to get the biggest superstars out of the markets bigger every postseason, it really and uniformly sucks. Get better writers, people. What is Eric Bischoff doing these days?)
Indiana's defensive metamorphosis began with its run to the Season Tournament final in December, when Haliburton's star ascended nationally. But even then, Indy came back down to earth and was crushed in Las Vegas in the IST finals by the Lakers. The Pacers had Los Angeles' best opportunity and learned that what they were doing wasn't good enough. The Lakers' attention to detail on defense, how much they stayed locked in on Indiana's scouting team, impressed Haliburton.
“I think the biggest thing was the experience,” Pacers center Myles Turner said. “We had a lot of guys who hadn't played high-level basketball or big games. The Season Tournament was like a greater sense of urgency in all of those games. “We know how we started the year defensively, but we all came together and told ourselves that if we could go from 30 to average, we can be a great team.”
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Carlisle expanded its starting lineup the day after Christmas, putting Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and Jalen Smith alongside Haliburton and Turner. That group had a net rating of -4.6, with a defensive rating of 120.8. It's not good at all, but at least the defensive bleeding wasn't as deep as it had been for the first two months. Once Siakam came aboard, the Pacers defense really took off; In 25 Haliburton-Nembhard-Nesmith-Siakam-Turner games, Indiana's defensive rating was 107.2, with a net rating of 6.4.
There was a lot of soul-searching, McConnell said.
“I think it was masked by the terrible offense we were playing, but it just wasn't good enough,” McConnell said. “You don't get to this point without changing things defensively. Thank you to the coaching staff and everyone for… just looking in the mirror to improve in that regard.”
Landing Siakam not only meant trading three first-round picks to Toronto (two this season, one in 2026), but also moving veteran forward Bruce Brown, whom Indiana had signed last offseason to much fanfare after Brown helped the Denver Nuggets to win the title. Brown didn't fit Indy head-to-head, but he had championship pedigree. Siakam too, of course, after helping the Raptors get a ring in 2019. But Brown is under contract for next season. Siakam is not.
Siakam has been impressed by the way the Pacers do things, beyond the rise of Haliburton (although that matters too). With president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard and general manager Chad Buchanan, Indy has veteran front office stability and a defined vision of how to build around Haliburton. In Carlisle, the Pacers have one of the game's great tacticians, who always seems to get the most out of his roster.
“After the season tournament, we made the decision as a staff that we needed to be better,” Carlisle said. “…I just told our guys that we are going to endure and we are going to get better. We were on a historic pace offensively, but to get to where we are right now and where we want to get to in this next round and in the future, what we were doing offensively was not sustainable. It just wasn't. Not if you can’t defend and rebound consistently.”
The task of beating top-seeded and well-held Boston starting Tuesday at TD Garden is Indiana's biggest challenge to date. The Celtics may be without center Kristaps Porziņģis for the start of the series, but they are otherwise healthy. They have been the best team in the league all season. They have had a relatively easy path to the conference finals.
Yet here come the Pacers, playing with house money, still far from dominating the city's sports headlines. Next Sunday will be the 108th running of the Indianapolis 500, and there's a rookie guard on the WNBA's Indiana Fever who has apparently drawn some attention.
The Pacers will continue to fly under the radar and they will love it.
(Photo by Pascal Siakam: Elsa/Getty Images)
