INDIANAPOLIS — These are bitter ironies that will wrestle and grapple each other across the next few hours, right up to 3:30 Sunday afternoon, Game 7, Madison Square Garden, the first time the Knicks will play one of these in 29 years.
There is the image of Josh Hart — cast-iron iron horse, seemingly bulletproof — wincing in discomfort, massaging his abdomen, finally trundling to the locker room early in the fourth quarter. His midsection was heavily wrapped, his face a combo of ferocity cut by a few dollops of fear, too.
“Just add it to the list, I guess,” Jalen Brunson said.
But there is also the image of the Knicks as a whole — whatever “whole” means from moment to moment, as it’s been since January — stubbornly refusing to stop playing in the dying hours of the regular season, willfully — almost gleefully — spitting in the eye of the Minutes Police who wrung their hands and wondered how they could push themselves.
“I think you look back at the end of the season,” Donte DiVincenzo said. “This is the exact reason we played those games to win, to get the 2 seed.”
That is why. This is why. The Knicks’ season is in peril, their ambitions never more vulnerable than right now, in the wake of the Pacers throttling them, 116-103, on Friday night at a raucous Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Hart is the latest Knick to drop, his abdomen so sore he couldn’t lift his arms to shoot in the second half. Add it to the list. At this rate, they could get 40 more cracks at the Pacers at Gainbridge and all 40 would look a lot like this one.
But they don’t have to come back to Gainbridge until next year.
All they have to worry about is Sunday. One game. One game to buy another week or two of basketball, earn a crack at the Celtics. And because the Knicks ignored the Minutes Police, because they ran through the tape right through overtime of Game 82, that game will be at the Garden.
“And we know,” DiVincenzo said, “that the Garden will be rocking.”
Sure it will. But this will be a far different challenge for the Knicks than Game 5 was. The 19,812 desperadoes emptying their voice-box clips Tuesday night were able to nudge the Knicks to a rarefied plane and the Knicks did the rest. It’s going to take more than that Sunday.
The Pacers had their very essence challenged by their coach for two full days. Rick Carlisle called them soft. He ripped their effort. He questioned whether they wanted to play as hard as the Knicks are willing to play. And Carlisle pushed every proper button: This was a decisive and thorough win. They were the better team Friday.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Knicks in the NBA playoffs
By rights, they ought to be the better team Sunday, too.
“It’s the ultimate game,” Carlisle said Friday. “It’s a great opportunity.”
The Pacers are going to feed the Knicks extra helpings of Pascal Siakam. They will already be on guard for Tyrese Haliburton, and that odd 3-pointer that has been killing them all series. T.J. McConnell will torture them some more. So will old friend Obi Toppin. And the Knicks, already wounded, are bleeding even more now.
“If the Knicks don’t win on Sunday, it’ll be because of health,” Bob Myers said on ESPN after the game. All Myers did was put together a Warriors team that won four championships between 2015 and 2022. “The way they’ve fought with who they’ve lost already is as commendable as any NBA team I’ve ever seen.”
But the people won’t come to the Garden on Sunday afternoon to watch the Knicks lie in state. New York won’t come to a standstill for three hours on what promises to be a splendid spring day simply to tune in and watch the Knicks be commendable, valorous in defeat.
And the Knicks wouldn’t ask them to.
One last time, they’ll try to create and to craft a 48-minute study in improbability. One last time they’ll shake off who isn’t there and simply worry about who is, regardless of whether they’re listed as doubtful, questionable or probable. They’ll give you an honest effort. You already know that. And if playing the game at home makes a difference in a bounce or a break or a whistle?
“I expect both teams to have desperation,” Brunson said.
The tension will be thick in midtown, outside and inside, but this is why the Knicks sweat and bled as often as they did. If they had to play Game 7 anywhere else, there’s little chance they’d get there. They get to play Game 7 at the Garden, in front of fans who want this for them even more than they want it for themselves.
Will it be enough?
It’ll be a hell of a thing to see if it is.
