My Two Cents: Despite Knicks Injuries, Pacers’ Playoff Run Deserves Praise

Rick Carlisle was right. And the Indiana Pacers’ head coach has been around the NBA long enough to know he was speaking the truth.

“When you win a Game 7 in Madison Square Garden (as a visitor), you’ve made history. It’s very, very difficult to do,” said the 64-year-old Carlisle, who’s been playing or coaching in the NBA now for 40 years. “We’re the uninvited guest, but he we are.”

It’s not hyperbole to say that the upstart Pacers — a No. 6 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs who only won 25 games just two years ago — had the greatest shooting night in NBA playoff history on Sunday when they beat the New York Knicks 130-109. They shot 67.1 percent from the field for the game, something that’s never been done before.

Never. And they’ve been keeping a scorebook for a long time.

To do that at Madison Square Garden made it even more special. They call it ”The Mecca” for a reason, the same reasons why a lot of people consider it the most important arena in the game. But the Pacers didn’t care. The home team had won all six games in this series, and the Pacers lost Game 5 here last Tuesday by 30. They were a modest underdog in Game 7 too, despite all the injuries that were decimating the Knicks roster.

But the Pacers came out and set the tone immediately. They scored at will throughout the first half, rolling up 70 points and making 10 of their first 11 shots and 16 of 21 — 76.2 percent — in the first quarter. They kept scoring, too, maybe not quite at the same pace, but their 130 points in a Game 7 tied for the third-most all-time.

This is what the Pacers like to do. They led the league in scoring this season, and when they’re rolling, they are very tough to stop. Point guard Tyrese Haliburton runs the show, and they can hurt you in a lot of ways.

“It’s a testament to our coaching staff and our offense,” veteran Pacers center Myles Turner said. “We have a historic offense obviously, but this guy (Haliburton) got things rolling and everybody just followed suit. To do that on the road when you’re in the Garden in a Game 7 obviously is phenomenal. This is what we’ve been doing all season long and it showed on a big stage.”

This is the second straight series the Pacers have won as underdogs. It’s also the second straight series they’ve won against depleted rosters. The Bucks were without MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo for the whole series, and sharp-shooter Damiam Lillard missed time and didn’t play at 100 percent either.

So what.

Injuries are part or the game in the NBA and the Pacers don’t need to apologize to anyone for being one of the last four teams standing. Twenty-six teams cannot win the 2024 NBA championship, but the Pacers are one of the four that can. Sure, they are massive longshots, but they’re still alive.

And they still have a chance.

Because it’s the Knicks and — much more importantly — it’s New York, the media capital of the world, no one gave Indiana a chance to win this series. All 16 NBA ”experts” in the ESPN stable picked the Knicks to win. Not a single person picked the Pacers. Turner joked in the postgame press conference that he took a picture on his phone of their picks. It served as motivation, to be sure.

When it’s New York against small-market Indiana, all the talk centered around the Knicks. The storylines were more about Jalen Brunson becoming a star — he did — and how many of his teammates were either sidelined or fought through injuries throughout the series.

Those are facts, of course, but they aren’t ”excuses.” The Knicks, to their credit, gave it all they had. Donte DiVincenzo, a role player, scored 39 points and made nine threes. Seldom-used veteran guard Alec Burks scored 26. This is his 13th year in the NBA and he’s played for seven different teams — mostly in anonymity. But he was out there fighting.

“Knowing that this team gave its best effort all year long, I can live with the result,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s disappointing, but in the end there’s only going to be one happy team. Twenty-nine teams will fall short. This team fought like crazy and there’s no regret.”

That’s why the Pacers still deserve a lot of credit for closing this out. To shoot lights out like they did is incredible, especially in a place like Madison Square Garden. To play with confidence there is something too, because this is a very young team going through a playoff run for the very first time.

It’s all new to them.

The Pacers, we know, can score. They’ve been doing it all year. But they’re also below average defensively and get clobbered on the boards too much. They’ve been trying to change that narrative though, and we saw that on Sunday. They guarded when they had to, rebounded when they had to and answered every Knicks run with a run of their own.

It was a beautiful, convincing win.

“I know we shot well, but we beat them on the boards and at halftime we had one more loose ball than they did,” Carlisle said. “This team was very, very much maligned for its defense early in the year. They have flipped the script. They won this series with grit and guts and physical play. Pressing 94 feet.

“That’s how we beat Milwaukee too. You have to give these guys a lot of credit for not a total change, but a very significant change in the attitude toward defense, the defiance about, the importance of defense, and what they did today.”

You certainly have to feel for the Knicks, who even lost Brunson to a fractured hand in the second half. Kind of an injury overkill, right? And you had to feel for for former Indiana Hoosier OG Anunoby, who missed most of the series with a hamstring injury. He started Game 7 even though he probably had no business being on the floor. He could barely move, but still made his first two shots.

He only had five minutes to give, but he gave them. But he also couldn’t guard anyone. Pascal Siakam, his former teammate in Toronto, scored four straight baskets against him and OG never returned.

“I wasn’t going in thinking I was going to test him, but obviously he didn’t look to healthy,” Siakam said. “He made some shots early. I love OG. Seeing him out there, I was just making sure he was OK first. I know it’s Game 7 and you want to give everything, but you’ve got to be healthy and he didn’t look healthy.”

In the end, all that matters is that the Pacers are moving on to the Eastern Conference finals. The top-seeded Boston Celtics are next, and they are the most prohibitive conference favorite since the 1997 Chicago Bulls that won 69 games.

No one is picking the indiana Pacers. Again.

Which is just fine with the Pacers. They’ll show up confident for Game 1 in Boston on Tuesday night. They’ve had some success against Boston this season, winning twice, including in the Play-In Tournament, but they also got boat-raced by 51 one night at TD Garden.

All the experts will weigh in and pick the Celtics. They aren’t being haters, Pacers fans, they’re just sharing their opinions. Heck, I picked the Celtics to win it all in November too. They’re really good.

But right now, the Pacers are doing a lot of good things, too. They deserve your praise, despite their good fortune of playing teams with thin rosters.

It’s all about survive and advance, and the Pacers have done exactly that. They may not have much of a shot against the Celtics, but they have a shot.

And that’s what makes it fun. It’s late May and basketball is still being played in Indiana. I’ll take it.

Tom Brew is a national basketball columnist for Fastbreak on FanNation. He publishes seven sites on the Sports Illustrated/FanNation network. You can follow him on Twitter (X) @tombrewsports.