Pacers Filing Complaints For Calls in Knicks Series

Brief New York Knicks reserve Rick Carlisle isn’t pleased with the zebras at Madison Square Garden, but courtside staple and “Madagascar” star Chris Rock has nothing to do with it.

Carlisle, now the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, took umbrage with the way officials called the first two games of the ongoing Eastern Conference Semifinals and now he’s planning to invoke a higher power: per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, Carlisle and Co. have assembled 78 different instances of incorrect calls or non-calls that went against blue and yellow favor and plan to submit them to the league for review.

“New York can get ready. They’ll see them too,” Carlisle declared after Game 2, a 130-121 Knicks victory, on Wednesday night, per Windhorst. “I’m always talking to our guys about not making it about the officials, but we deserve a fair shot.”

The sixth-seeded Pacers trail the Knicks 2-0 in the best-of-seven series, which will shift to Indianapolis for Game 3 on Friday night (7 p.m. ET, ESPN).

Some believed that Carlisle had cause to complain after Game 1 on Monday, which saw the Pacers lose late possessions on questionable calls, or lack thereof. Carlisle declared that he didn’t want to talk about officiating in the aftermath, claiming he was “not expecting to get calls.” This time around, however, Carlisle held nothing back, going as far as to imply that a metropolitan conspiracy is stacked against the Pacers’ favor.

“Small-market teams deserve an equal shot,” Carlisle, who was ejected from the final stages of Wednesday’s game, said. “They deserve a fair shot no matter where they’re playing.”

To be fair, Indiana had several fair shots to escape from New York with a 2-0 series lead of its own … but failed to take advantage. The Pacers have held the halftime lead in each of the first two games and led by as much as 12 on Wednesday.

Carlisle’s crew, however, failed to expose a shorthanded Knics group that lost both OG Anunoby and Jalen Brunson for extended stretches in Game 2, notably falling victim to the wrong end of a 36-18 margin in the third quarter. New York is already missing Bojan Bogdanovic and Julius Randle for the rest of the season while Mitchell Robinson is out for at least six weeks. The Pacers were also drastically outrebounded in the final 24 minutes, losing the board battle 26-13 after posing a plus-three advantage in the opening half.

To their credit, Carlisle’s men partly accepted blame for the loss, which also saw a bizarre lack of T.J. McConnell in the final stages. Indiana was a plus-10 on the scoreboard as McConnell dished out 10 points and 12 assists in relief, but he played just five minutes in the final period (going 3-of-3 from the field in that span).

“Let’s not pretend like (officiating) is the only reason we lost; we just didn’t play good enough,” Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said in Windhorst’s report. “We’ve just got to be better.”

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