Pacers vs. Knicks, Game 2: New York's big problem? Its starters continue to be no match for Indiana

NEW YORK — If you find yourself in a hole, you should probably stop digging.

The New York Knicks are in the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2000. They won 51 games this season — the most any Knicks team has won since 2011-12. They’ve won 50-plus in consecutive seasons for the first time since the 1993-94 and 1994-95 campaigns. On Friday, point guard Jalen Brunson and center Karl-Anthony Towns were both named to the All-NBA team — just the fifth time in franchise history two Knicks earned selections in the same year.

This has been, by virtually any measuring stick, the franchise’s best season in a quarter-century. The Knicks have gotten this far. Might as well stick with what got you here, right?

Well, about that:

The Knicks’ starting five — Brunson, Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart — played more minutes than any other lineup in the NBA during the regular season, and it has played more minutes than any other lineup in the NBA during the playoffs. It is, very clearly, the group head coach Tom Thibodeau trusts most … and for nearly six months now, it has been a net negative.

New York’s starters got outscored by nine points in 379 minutes from Jan. 1 through the end of the regular season. They got outscored by 24 points over 121 minutes in the Knicks’ six-game second-round win over the Celtics. They opened the Eastern finals getting outscored by 16 points in 26 minutes in what wound up being a three-point Game 1 loss.

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“We’re just putting ourselves in a deficit, and I told you how we can’t keep doing that,” Towns said Friday. “It’s not every time we’re gonna be able to fight back and find ourselves with a win, so, you know, just gotta execute and be more disciplined.”

And after Friday’s 114-109 loss to Indiana — a defeat that earned the visiting Pacers a road sweep at Madison Square Garden, and with it, total control of the best-of-seven series — the first five has been outscored by 29 points in just 43 minutes against Rick Carlisle’s club.

“Yeah, we just gotta keep looking at it,” Thibodeau said after the loss. “Gotta do better.”

Asked a follow-up question about whether, down 2-0, the time had come to more strongly consider a change, Thibodeau brusquely replied, “We always look at everything.”

Thibodeau has fielded plenty of questions about the struggles of the starting lineup — about the inability to find consistent answers when teams cross-match their centers onto Hart and wings onto Towns, about whether swapping either more shooting (in the form of guard Miles McBride) or more size and paint protection (in the form of center Mitchell Robinson) in for Hart might better balance the group, about whether the current structure best maximizes the offensive production of Bridges and Anunoby, etc. He’s stayed the course, though, insisting before Game 2 that no matter how grim the plus-minus numbers seemed, he didn’t view them through that simple of a lens.

“It’s hard to just look at it that way,” he said. “There’s a lot of mixing and matching. Sometimes they’re with the second unit, as well. So I think that you look at everything, and you also have to look at what happens when you bring the second unit in.”

And so: Thibodeau rolled with the same starting five Friday … and got an up-close-and-personal look at more of the same.

The Pacers raced out to a 19-9 start in 6 1/2 minutes against a Knicks team looking a step slow physically and tactically. And when Thibodeau went to his second unit — which is to say, Robinson and McBride, the two dudes off the bench who actually play — New York promptly ripped off a 10-0 run.

An offensive rebound and tip-in by Robinson gave the Knicks a lead heading into the second quarter. They extended it in mix-and-match minutes featuring the double-big lineup of Robinson and Towns, who scored 12 points in the first 5:14 of the second to help New York open a seven-point lead.

As is their wont, though, the Pacers walked them down, playing through All-Star forward Pascal Siakam, who repeatedly roasted whichever Knicks defender he drew en route to 23 first-half points to allow Indiana to stay connected, going into halftime down just three at 52-49.

It’s worth noting that, after that rough game-opening 19-9 stretch, Thibodeau didn’t go back to his full starting five for the rest of the first half — a span that saw New York outscore Indiana 43-30. The Knicks came out of halftime with that same unit, though … and allowed a 15-7 run that put Indiana on top, prompting a Thibodeau timeout just over five minutes into the third quarter.

Thibodeau did not make any substitutions coming out of that timeout, though, sticking with his full starting five until sending Robinson in for Towns at the 4:18 mark, with New York trailing by three. The Knicks would regain the lead a couple of minutes later and go into the fourth tied, thanks to a beautiful up-and-under on Andrew Nembhard by Brunson, who once again looked extremely comfortable scoring in isolation on any defender Indiana threw at him:

With both teams scoring efficiently through the first three quarters — 81 points on 67 possessions for the Knicks, good for a 120.9 offensive rating; 81 on 68 possessions for the Pacers, a 119.1 clip — it seemed the fourth quarter would come down to which team could generate enough stops. The Pacers quickly made a compelling argument the Knicks couldn’t — at least, not with Towns and Robinson on the floor together.

Indiana opened the fourth repeatedly looking to hunt Towns, running pick-and-rolls at him to get him moving his feet and see if he could remain locked into his coverage. It proved fruitful: an open pull-up jumper for T.J. McConnell when Towns gave him too much room in drop coverage; an open dunk for Myles Turner after Towns had leapt up to trap McConnell and then sort of floated in space, leaving Robinson to make the unenviable choice between staying home and giving up a wide-open Siakam 3 or covering the arc to concede the paint.

When Towns shifted over to Siakam, Indiana went at Robinson, running an empty-corner McConnell-Turner side pick-and-roll to once again force Robinson to make a decision in space. He jumped out at McConnell, who just dropped the ball off to Turner for a midrange bank shot, with Towns not rotating over quickly enough to get a hand up on the contest.

They poked at the bigs’ help-side defense again a couple of possessions later: first with Turner setting an off-ball screen for Ben Sheppard to allow the reserve Pacers wing to pop free for another open triple ahead of a late Towns contest, and then with Sheppard making a well-timed cut to draw the attention of both Robinson and Cameron Payne, leaving Siakam — again — wide open for a catch-and-shoot 3 to cap a 13-4 run that put Indiana back in control of the game.

After that, Thibodeau subbed out Towns. He sat on the bench, watching Robinson man the middle with Brunson, Anunoby, Bridges and McBride … and he stayed on the pine for the next six and a half minutes.

Asked in the locker room if it was tough to lose a game after spending most of the fourth quarter on the sideline, Towns paused before saying, “It’s tough to lose anyway. So, just got to regroup and get ready for the next one.”

“We got in a hole, and then the group that was in there gave us a chance, so we [were] just riding them,” Thibodeau said. “Just searching for a way to win.”

They nearly found it. Brunson and Bridges combined for 18 points in the final nine minutes, including five points in 34 seconds by Brunson to get New York back within three, followed by an assist to a cutting Hart to cut the deficit to one — a possession that netted points, but saw precious seconds tick off the clock.

“I was looking for a 3,” Brunson said. “But I just saw him wide open, and with enough time to play the ‘trap, steal, foul’ game.”

The Knicks did foul Aaron Nesmith on the ensuing inbounds, sending the Game 1 hero to the line for two clutch free throws. He drilled both, leaving New York down by three with 14.7 seconds remaining and one timeout. Thibodeau elected not to take it, preferring to give Brunson the chance to attack in the open court rather than advancing the ball into the frontcourt but allowing Indiana to load up on the inbounds to prevent him from ever getting it. An edge-of-the-logo prayer went unanswered, the final buzzer sounded, and the Knicks found themselves exactly where they didn’t want to be: in the same place Cleveland was last round, heading to Indiana down 2-0, a predicament in which the team with the two-game lead has historically won the series 92% of the time.

“Don’t worry about that — I told you about the word ‘history,’” Towns said. “I’m not here to repeat it. We’re here to make it. If I’ve learned anything, especially last year [with the Timberwolves, during their series against the Nuggets], as quick as you win two games is as quick as you can lose two games.”

The run of play won’t just turn on its own, though; the Knicks will have to make it. Not getting down big early would be an awfully nice start — provided they can find the answer to why they keep doing that.

“I’m not sure, man,” Bridges said. “I don’t know if we’re just … I think it’s maybe a defensive thing? I gotta see. Sometimes, you’re just so — you’re in it, you know, you gotta go back and watch the game. But I don’t know, man. I think you just gotta talk to each other off the jump, be physical off the jump. I think maybe we’re just playing a little too soft in the beginning of halves. Yeah, I’m not sure.”

Thibodeau, for his part, was more focused on how the Knicks ended the game than how they started it.

“It comes down to a couple of things,” he said. “Going into the fourth quarter, it’s a tie ballgame, and we just got make better plays. More winning plays. … We had a chance to tie the ballgame. It’s a hard-fought game. Both games came down to the last play.”

That’s not always the lens he sees it through, though. Asked before the game about the importance of getting some production out of backup point guard Payne, Thibodeau took a broader view.

“Well, you need production from everybody,” he said. “It’s not an individual thing. It’s a group thing. How does the group function together?”

At this point, one thing is abundantly clear: The group that Thibodeau trusts most is not functioning together effectively enough to give the Knicks the edge they need in a hyper competitive series against an excellent opponent that has already taken two games on New York’s home court. Thibodeau insists he looks at everything. Before Game 3 in Indiana on Sunday, he might need to look a little harder — including, perhaps, at why he’s not seeing what’s in front of his face.