Knicks' season ends with dominant Pacers win in Game 6 of Eastern Conference finals
Indiana Pacers forward Obi Toppin fouls Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns during the second half of Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals in Indianapolis on Saturday. Credit: AP/AJ Mast
INDIANAPOLIS — In the end, there is only one team that will hold the trophy, and maybe you can accept that it will not be the Knicks.
But if it was going to end, you didn’t want it to end like this.
The Knicks stood up with their backs against the wall once, staving off elimination in Game 5. But on Saturday night, the Indiana Pacers arrived at Gainbridge Fieldhouse all dressed in black, intent on burying them.
And in the second half, with their season crumbling around them, the Knicks seemed willing to step right into the grave. The Pacers not only ran by them, as they have done to so many teams, but were the clear aggressors, pushing, shoving, grabbing and daring the Knicks to fight back.
And there just wasn’t any fight left as the Knicks fell, 125-108, sending Indiana to the NBA Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
History will decide whether this was an accomplishment — reaching the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years, a first step for a team put together with a window of matching ages and contracts. Or was falling to the Pacers in six games a disappointment?
The Knicks had entered the series with the home-court advantage and were the favorites. On this night, with the frustration clearly visible, it just felt like pain.
“It sucks, man, simple as that. It sucks,” Jalen Brunson said. “I’m not sure ‘accomplished’ is the word I would use here, but I think the way this team progressed this year, for me, it was fun. There were a lot of people saying we couldn’t do a lot of things. A lot of negativity around what we were trying to accomplish, and the way we put blinders on and went to work, that’s something I was proud of with this team. I’m proud of how we stayed the course. Not winning tonight and being knocked out, but just proud of our guys. Simple as that.”
“There’s disappointment because you fall short of what your goal is,” Tom Thibodeau said. “And in the end, there’s only going to be one team that achieves the goal. So I think the challenge for us is to look at it for what it is. We finished in the top three, but we’re falling short of the ultimate goal . . . It’s improvement from last year, but it’s ultimately not what our ultimate goal is.”
The Knicks will be haunted by their historic collapse in Game 1 that had them fighting uphill all series. And they certainly will spend the summer thinking about how it all came crashing down with their biggest stars, Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, struggling and no one able to pick them up.
“Not much to be said,” Josh Hart said. “We knew we kind of gave this one away. You can’t start 0-2, especially losing two at home. You can’t give away games in the playoffs. It’s tough. We’re all disappointed and frustrated. We’ll take that into the summer and make strides and work on our games individually and get back end of the summer and work on that collectively. That’s the next step.”
Thibodeau preaches the same mantra every day — rebound, defend and low turnovers. The defense was dreadful, allowing so many wide-open three-pointers and fast-break layups. The ballhandling was worse, with Brunson scoring 19 points but turning the ball over five times and the Knicks turning it over 17 times.
Towns had 22 points and 14 rebounds but seemed lost on defense all night. OG Anunoby had 24 points to lead the Knicks, but that wasn’t close to being enough to halt the avalanche. With 1:52 left, Thibodeau emptied the bench.
The best performance for a Knicks fan might have been former Knick Obi Toppin (18 points), who elicited chants from the crowd, provided the finishing touches with lob dunks and three-pointers and had the fans chanting his name.
The Knicks saw it all fall apart in the opening two minutes of the second half. Leading by four at the break, Indiana started with a three-point field goal by series MVP Pascal Siakam, who finished with 31 points and averaged 24.8 in the series. After Towns missed a pair of free throws, Aaron Nesmith sank a three-pointer.
Towns was blocked by Siakam, Anunoby was blocked by Thomas Bryant — the Knicks’ fourth straight miss of the half — and Siakam finished on the other end, drawing a foul on Mikal Bridges on the play. The three-point play gave Indiana a 67-54 lead 1:58 into the quarter.
The Pacers went ahead 78-63 after raining down more threes — 13-for-23 to that point — and the Knicks seemed pushed back on their heels. But out of the timeout, Anunoby sank a three and, after Toppin’s turnover, Bridges scored on a break. A dunk by Towns and a free throw cut the gap to 78-71.
But the Knicks continued to be plagued by sloppy passes and ballhandling and Indiana ran a 9-0 streak right back at them, upping the lead to 16 points at 87-71. There would be no late heroics, no comeback this time.
“We came out of halftime and we didn’t shoot the ball well,” Towns said. “They found a way to win and we didn’t respond with the firepower we needed. It’s unfortunate to put ourselves in a position like that and with the season on the line that we didn’t pull one of those Knicks victories out where you are down in the fourth and find a way to come back and win.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
