The Pacers celebrate after climbing back from a 17-point deficit to take down the Knicks in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
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NEW YORK — Move over, Reggie Miller. Your Pacers descendants just authored a new chapter in Knicks misery.
Aaron Nesmith drained six 3s in five minutes, Tyrese Haliburton nailed a prayer of a shot that bounced from the back of the rim toward the heavens, only to fall gently through the net at the end of regulation to force overtime, and the Pacers finished off their third stunning comeback of this postseason with a 138-135 win over New York in the Knicks’ first Eastern Conference finals game in 25 years.
Indiana, in the conference finals for the second consecutive year after beating New York to get here last year, leads 1-0 with Game 2 on Friday at Madison Square Garden.
“This is day 1 of 13 days,” Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said. “Remarkable resilience by our guys … we’re not going to get too excited about this.”
What’s the Miller connection to what happened in New York Wednesday night? In addition to him being on the TNT broadcast for the latest unbelievable moment in this storied rivalry, the Pacers trailed by 17 halfway through the fourth quarter of Game 1 and were still down by nine with about a minute to play in regulation.
Three decades ago, Miller, in consecutive years against the Knicks, scored 25 in the fourth quarter to complete a Garden comeback in a conference finals, and then reeled off the infamous “eight points in nine seconds” barrage to win a conference semifinal game in 1995.
On Wednesday, Haliburton received a huge assist from Nesmith, who scored 30 points. He began his 3-point onslaught with 4:55 left in regulation and the Pacers trailing by 15. He connected on six 3s (eight for the game), the last of the fourth quarter came with 22.6 seconds left to make it a two-point game. Nesmith is the only player in NBA history to make six 3s in the fourth quarter of a playoff game — not even Miller did that against the Knicks.
“It’s unreal — it’s probably the best feeling in the world,” Nesmith said of his Miller-like heater. “I didn’t really realize what I was doing in the moment.”
The Pacers survived an uncharacteristic stretch earlier in the fourth in which they showed a rare lack of poise and found themselves down 17 with Knicks star Jalen Brunson on the bench with five fouls.
Ahead by a point after Nesmith free throws, the Knicks nearly turned it over when Brunson tried to spike the ball off the Pacers and missed. OG Anunoby corralled the ball and was fouled, but missed the first of two free throws for the Knicks with 7.3 seconds left. He made the second, giving the Pacers a chance to inbound the ball with the clock stopped.
Haliburton took it the length of the court, dribbled inside the 3-point line and then back out, and thought he won the game in regulation when his last-second shot clanged sky high off the back of the rim and fell through the net as time expired for what for a brief moment seemed like a 126-125 Pacers win.
Haliburton, who took the shot with his team trailing by two, went so far as to mimic the choke sign, reminiscent of Miller’s gesture toward Spike Lee after scoring 25 points in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the 1994 Eastern finals between these longtime rivals.
But officials ruled in real time that Haliburton’s toe was on the 3-point line as he shot the ball, meaning the goal was worth two. A replay review confirmed the call, sending the game into overtime.
“This fan base is difficult enough to deal with without getting into a lot of unnecessary words,” Carlisle said, before adding later: “Tyrese has earned the right to do what he wants.”
“If I had known it was a two, I wouldn’t have done it,” Haliburton admitted.
The one thing he did know about his shot? “I knew … it was going in.
“It felt like it got stuck up there,” Haliburton said. “And honestly, like, when it went in, I was like my eyes might have been deceiving me in the moment. But it felt good — it felt good when it left my hand.”
Haliburton finished with 31 points and 11 assists. He connected on game winners to send Milwaukee home from the first round and to complete a stirring comeback in Cleveland last series, but his game-tying shot is the one most will remember, because of the opponent and the stage.
Andrew Nembhard scored seven of his 15 points in overtime. His layup with 27 seconds left put the Pacers ahead for good, and former Knick Obi Toppin’s putback dunk with 15 seconds left made it 138-135. Brunson, who scored 43 points, and Karl-Anthony Towns, who added 35 points, both missed 3s at the end that could have tied the game.
“It’s our job to make history,” Towns said. “We’re not here to repeat history, we’re here to make history. That doesn’t pop into our mind.”
Indiana has fostered stunning fourth-quarter comebacks against Milwaukee, Cleveland, and now New York this postseason. The Pacers trailed by four and by seven points inside of one minute left in regulation, and then overtime, against the Bucks in Game 5 of the first round and found a way. They were down seven with 48 seconds left against Cleveland in the conference semis, but prevented the Cavs from taking a shot and won it on Haliburton’s 3.
“It’s a muscle,” Carlisle said. “The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And it’s not easy.”
The win in New York took a stage full of thread-the-needle, have-to-have-it performances to pull it off. A predicament for which the Pacers were partly to blame.
When Brunson collected his fifth foul with 10:05 left in the fourth quarter — an eternity by NBA standards — the Knicks led by just two points.
Nembhard, one of the better perimeter defenders in the league, fouled Miles McBride on a 3. And on the next possession, Nesmith, another excellent defender, fouled Towns on a 3. Together, McBride and Towns made five of six from the foul line.
As an aside, Haliburton and Nesmith missed open 3s. Pascal Siakam, who found a tougher going against the Knicks than he did in the Cleveland series, missed a layup and had his dunk attempt blocked at the rim by McBride. Overall, the Pacers missed eight shots while falling behind by 17 with Brunson out of the game.
The Pacers, well, they found a way back into the game, and into their closet of knives — where they keep the sharpest, biggest blades for cutting the Knicks’ hearts out of their chests.
“We played 46 good minutes,” Towns said. “Those two minutes is where we lost the game.”
If there is a silver lining for the Knicks, beyond their relative good play for, as Towns mentioned, most of the game, it’s that history tells us these deflating, wipe-the-crust-out-of-their-eyes losses to the Pacers don’t necessarily mean New York will lose the series.
After Miller’s back-and-forth with Lee during the 1994 conference finals when Miller went off in the fourth quarter and flashed the choke sign, well, the Knicks came back and won that series.
“I’ve seen that ‘Winning Time’ doc like 50 times,” Haliburton said. “I know they (the Pacers) didn’t win that series (against the Knicks in 1994), so I don’t want to repeat that.”
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Joe Vardon is a senior NBA writer for The Athletic, based in Cleveland. Follow Joe on Twitter @joevardon
Mike Vorkunov contributed to this story.