The Pacers have clearly been the better team, but can they close it out tonight?
Will this be the last time we witness Timothee Chalamet on the sidelines during the NBA playoffs ? Will fellow New York Knicks superfan Ben Stiller be there right beside him? Those are the key questions we must ask ourselves as we stare down a potential elimination game as the Knicks face the Indiana Pacers and a 3-1 deficit.
The Knicks, it turns out, might have Tim-ee, they might even have Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. But they don’t have Tyrese Haliburton, and they don’t have the surrounding firepower of the Pacers.
Haliburton is coming off a triple-double of 32 points, 15 assists, and 12 rebounds with zero turnovers in Indy’s 130-121 win in Game 4. It was the first-ever 30-15-10 playoff triple-double that also featured nary a turnover.
Simply put, the Pacers have been the better team, and they seem destined to take this series. In some ways, this kind of under-the-radar talent that people don’t recognize until it’s staring them in the face is awfully reminicient of Detroit’s run to the finals in 2004. Of course, the Pistons graduated from the Eastern Conference Finals into an NBA Finals where they got to play a top-heavy, old, and overrated Los Angeles Lakers team. The Pacers will have no such luck. They would face the Oklahoma City Thunder. A team just as young, and somehow even more talented and even deeper than these Pacers. That’s not to say they don’t have a shot at a title, but it will be an uphill battle.
But before we can truly litigate that, these Pacers need to take advantage of the Knicks. Can they do it tonight?
Game Vitals
When: 8 p.m. ET
Where: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
Watch: TNT, TruTV, Max
Odds: Pacers -4.5
Projected Lineups
Indiana Pacers (3-1)
Tyrese Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner
New York Knicks (1-3)
Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mitchell Robinson