There’s no sentence in the King’s English that contains less truth than this: “Sports is fun.”
You know better. You know sports is a lot more agony of defeat than thrill of victory. You know the highs rarely outpace the lows. You don’t watch playoff games — any sport — as much as endure them. Sleep? No shot. Not when the games mean this much.
But sometimes you get a night like this one at Madison Square Garden. Sometimes you really do feel like everyone is in this together: players, coaches, ushers. And fans. Of course, the fans. Sometimes you get a game like Knicks 121, Pacers 91 — a game in which the Knicks, with only a few exceptions, led comfortably across the final 30 minutes or so.
A game in which 19,812 customers cleared their throats early, then emptied the tank across the next 2 ¹/₂ hours. None of you who were there will claim you were more important than Jalen Brunson — 44 points, seven rebounds, plus-31 for the night. Or Josh Hart (18, 11 and plus-21). Or Isaiah Hartenstein (17 rebounds, 12 of them on the offensive glass).
Don’t take my word. Asked about the 62-point turnaround — !!! — between Games 4 and 5, Brunson offered an explanation: “Maybe the home crowd. They were phenomenal.”
For one night, this really was about everyone doing their part. This was about the Knicks on the floor coming through in a must-have game with as impressive a win as any of the 56 that preceded it. It’s about Tom Thibodeau, who brilliantly slotted Deuce McBride into the starting five and was rewarded with 17 points, a plus-26, with terrific defense.
And, yes, this was about the fans in the stands, all way from the floor to the bridge and everywhere in between, refusing to halt the tumult even as the lead approached 30 at the end. You’ve earned that much. Hell, at these prices, sports owes you a lot more.
But this one’ll have to do. This is one you can savor for an extra day, since this increasingly contentious series won’t resume until Friday night in Indianapolis — where the Pacers, undefeated at home in the playoffs, will try to buy themselves at least an extra weekend of basketball season.
The Pacers came out hot, hitting everything they took beyond the 3-point line. Brunson missed a few shots. There were some pockets of quiet despair at the start, when it looked like the Pacers might’ve brought Sunday’s Game 4 momentum with them on the team plane, loaded in the overhead bins. It was 16-9, Indiana, with 5 ¹/₂ minutes gone.
It was 112-75, Knicks, over the next 42 ¹/₂.
They’ll be sore Wednesday morning. You’ll be hoarse. Everybody doing what they had to. Outsiders wants to know why the Knicks — not just Thibodeau, the whole team — worked like lunatics to inch their way into the 2-seed? This is why. For a night like this. For a game like this. For a blending of soul and sound and savagery you would’ve heard on both ends of Manhattan if they’d opened the doors.
“A hard lesson,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “They have a cold-blooded desire to get the ball.”
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Donte DiVincenzo agreed: “That,” he said, “is who we are.”
The Knicks? Cold-blooded is an apt description. For two days the narrative was simple: The Pacers were younger, faster and had seized their confidence last weekend in Indiana. The Knicks had reached a point where they’d achieved something almost no New York team ever does: Some had actually started to pity them.
The Knicks refused that largesse. They simply came out and maximized the essence of what makes them who they are. They outrebounded the Pacers 53-29. They limited Tyrese Haliburton to nine shots and 13 points, a stark contrast to the way he chewed through Games 3 and 4, leading with his mouth.
“It’s always defense first,” McBride said. “Whatever comes on offense comes from how we play on defense.”
In the third, when Myles Turner knocked down three straight 3s to single-handedly trim a 16-point lead to seven, the Knicks barely blinked.
It helps to have Brunson on your team, of course, and Brunson looked as healthy as he’s been since banging up his ankle in Game 2.
“As much as you talk about him,” Thibodeau said, “it’s never enough.”
Lately it’s also been nice to have Alec Burks on the team, a third straight double-digit output straight out of witness protection, 18 points and five 3s.
“They’ve shown it all year,” Thibodeau said. “That’s who we are. This is our way. We have to play hard every possession and keep doing it. When we do, it’s enjoyable for everyone.”
There was fun in full supply Tuesday night, and now there will for sure be at least one more basketball gathering at the Garden in 2024. And by the time you digest what you saw, you can start to hope that maybe that won’t be Game 7 on Sunday, but Game 3 of the conference finals next week. You’ve earned the right to dream, too.
