Knicks get back in series, thanks to a terrific game by Karl-Anthony Towns
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns dunks against the Indiana Pacers during the first half of Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on Sunday in Indianapolis. Credit: AP/AJ Mast
INDIANAPOLIS
The Knicks were down by 20 in the second quarter. Jalen Brunson was in foul trouble. And all but the hardest-core Knicks fans had pretty much accepted that their season would be over in a matter of days.
OK, that’s one way to look at it. The other way is that the Knicks had the Indiana Pacers exactly where they wanted them.
For the third time this postseason, the Knicks came back from 20 points down to win a game they probably shouldn’t have. Their 106-100 victory over the Pacers on Sunday night in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals may have been the most dramatic of all of them, given that a loss would have put the Knicks in an 0-3 hole — a deficit that no NBA team has ever come back from.
Instead, the Knicks have given the Pacers a reason to be nervous, thanks to a spectacular fourth quarter by Karl-Anthony Towns, who came up big when his team needed it most.
In the final 12 minutes, Towns was not only the best player on the court but the best in the NBA as he exploded for 20 points and eight rebounds to stun a raucous crowd at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. It was the most fourth-quarter points by a Knicks player since that stat started being kept in 1997.
“The mantra of the team is when someone gets going, you got to try to keep him going,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of the show Towns was putting on. “It was everyone working together to get open shots for him.”
In other words, the Knicks go the ball to Towns and got out of the way. And in return, he saved them from what very well could have been an embarrassing sweep in the conference finals.
It was exactly the kind of dominating performance the Knicks imagined when they traded Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Towns at the start of training camp. By having a huge game when the Knicks most needed it, he showed an incredible level of resiliency.
Towns bounced back from a poor Game 2 in which he spent a chunk of the fourth quarter on the bench in favor of Mitchell Robinson. Then the Knicks decided to start Robinson alongside him, sort of the way Minnesota once did with Rudy Gobert, in order to make up for the fact that Towns is not a strong defensive player.
What’s more, he struggled in the first three quarters of Game 3, scoring four points on 2-for-8 shooting.
So what the heck happened?
“The fourth quarter is different. It’s a whole ’nother game,” Towns said. “Forget that last game and those last three quarters and just focus on giving yourself a chance to win the game. My teammates put me in spots to succeed . . . We knew when we got in that fourth quarter, we gotta get back in the game and we felt very confident.”
The Knicks hoped to come out strong when they made a rare lineup change and started Robinson in place of Hart. The change didn’t exactly spark them to have a big first quarter, and they fell behind 55-35 with 3:20 remaining in the second quarter.
A reserve group that included Delon Wright, Deuce McBride and Landry Shamet helped chip away at the lead. The Knicks trailed by only 10 points entering the fourth quarter, setting the table for Towns’ huge performance.
He shot 6-for-9 from the field in the quarter, including 3-for-4 from three-point range, and was 5-for-6 from the free-throw line.
“KAT as we know is a very gifted scorer,” Thibodeau said. “He can score at three different levels. He’s comfortable at the three-point line. He’s comfortable putting it on the floor. He’s comfortable playing back to the basket. As long as he stays aggressive, it’s a huge plus for us.”
Brunson, who had four fouls in the first half, said it says a lot about the Knicks’ locker room that everyone was able to come together when they needed it most.
“The professionalism they have and doing what it takes to win, we have a close-knit locker room,’’ he said. “It’s just the way that the guys are prepared and ready to go tonight, and not being discouraged by the deficit and continuing to fight back speaks volumes to what those guys did tonight.”
And the fact that they did it when the Knicks needed it most may have saved their season.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
