NBA Matchups: May 27

New York Knicks at Indiana Pacers

Team Totals: Pacers 110.3, Knicks 116.8

Injury Report: Isaiah Jackson (O, Achilles), Aaron Nesmith (Q, ankle)

Pacers projected starters: Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner

Knicks projected starters: Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns

Offensive Ranks: Pacers 10th, Knicks 5th
Defensive Ranks: Pacers 13th, Knicks 12th 

Carlisle quotes: Said it was a poor start and finish to the fourth, said they needed to attack more and needed to avoid miscues, said the Knicks had a lot of better defenders in the game and there’s “a different element” to the grind, said Nesmith was moving well down the stretch from his ankle tweak, said he didn’t know what plan the Knicks had to start the game but it worked out, said KAT is a hard guard and he had some really tough shots against them late.

Thibs quotes: Said that KAT and Brunson not playing together is more because of foul trouble but he could see the Knicks going away from that duo if the game goes that way, said it was a hard-fought game and they were their best in the fourth, said Hart played an all-around game, said Deuce gave them great minutes when Brunson was in foul trouble in the fourth, said Delon Wright and Landry Shamet are high-character guys and they both do the right thing every day, said he’s not worried about KAT grabbing his knee late and Josh Hart limping a bit late, said this time of year mental toughness means more compared to physical toughness, said they were going to play Delon regardless of Deuce McBride foul trouble, said the lineup change didn’t impact the overall minutes for Mitch and Hart, said Hart is so unselfish and that helped make it work with the new starting lineup, said he doesn’t care about rotation size and he just wants the best chance to win. 

Stats and notes:

*This series is just so hard to explain with all these crazy runs with the Knicks becoming the first team in the play-by-play era to have three 20-point comebacks in one postseason run (since 1997-1998). One of the biggest issues for the Knicks is how much they are struggling with the KAT-Brunson duo. Those two in this series have a -24.5 net rating while the Brunson and KAT off lineups have been +12.7 and the reverse is +20.5 (KAT on, Brunson off). As noted in the Thibs quotes, the Brunson-KAT duo only playing 19 minutes together in Game 3 was because of foul trouble, but Thibs said he could see a scenario where the game dictates they aren’t playing together as much. The Knicks only played their normal starters for four minutes with three of them coming in the fourth, and their starters basically drew even in their 14 minutes. Hey, the lineup switch worked because they got a win at least. For the macro stats in Game 3, the Knicks were able to limit the interior scoring for the Pacers with a 40-32 paint-point edge while they also won the second-chance points 20-14. The Knicks had by far their best halfcourt defense of this series at 84.4 in Game 3 (106.1 G1, 109.9 G2). As Rick Carlisle mentioned, he said it was much more of a grind to generate good shots against better Knicks defensive players. New York’s halfcourt offense was right on par with their previous games at 103.4, but they had nothing working in transition. We’ll see what wild stuff comes this time around.