Pacers-Knicks: After another shocking late comeback, it must be asked — how do the Pacers keep doing this?
NEW YORK — If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Indiana Pacers in these 2025 NBA playoffs, it’s this: They’ve always got time.
Down seven with 40 seconds to go in overtime of an elimination game against the Bucks in Round 1? No problem. Down seven with 47 seconds to go in Game 2 in Cleveland? No problem.
And now: Down 14 at Madison Square Garden with 2:51 to go in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals?
No problem.
Another night, another unprecedented comeback — or unprecedented collapse, depending on how full your glass is — for Indiana, which once again engineered a hostile takeover of a road arena, slipping past the New York Knicks in overtime Wednesday, 138-135.
“Unprecedented for other teams,” former Knicks forward Obi Toppin corrected, with a smile, after chipping in eight points with 10 rebounds, including two huge dunks in the final minute of overtime with the game in the balance. “But for us, we just keep it going. We’re always going to play until that last whistle, until that last buzzer.”
Last spring, the Pacers ended New York’s season, winning a Game 7 on the MSG court behind a historic offensive display. Now, they’ve snatched home-court advantage away from a Knicks team that had to be feeling like they were on top of the world with three minutes to go … and that, like Milwaukee and Cleveland before them, exits the World’s Most Famous Arena wondering what the hell had just happened.
“You just can never let your guard down against them,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after his team squandered a 17-point fourth-quarter lead to fall behind in a series for the first time this postseason. “No lead is safe.”
They’re not safe because Indiana has multiple players who can get hot in a hurry. Playing the role of the Human Torch on Wednesday: Aaron Nesmith, who entered the fourth quarter with 10 points on 3-for-5 shooting, and ended it with 30 points on 9-for-12 shooting, drilling six triples in the final five minutes of the fourth alone, including three in the last minute, to send peals of anxiety coursing through the concourse at MSG.
“I was just doing what the team needed of me, you know?” Nesmith said after the game. “I was just letting them fly. I was in a good rhythm. Didn’t really realize what I was doing in the moment.”
What he was doing in the moment was becoming the first player in NBA history to hit six 3-pointers in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.
“It’s unreal,” he said. “It’s probably the best feeling in the world for me, personally. I love it. Like, when that basket feels like an ocean and anything you toss up, you feel like it’s going to go in. It’s just … so much fun.”
“Obviously, Aaron’s heroics — I mean, I hope they’re talked about,” said Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton. “They can’t be talked about enough. … I think each shot that he made just kept giving us more confidence that we could, you know, really win this game.”
Each shot also introduced just a bit more doubt into the Knicks, who had seized control of Game 1 with a 16-1 run after star point guard Jalen Brunson picked up his fifth personal foul less than two minutes into the fourth.
OG Anunoby drilled a pair of huge shots. Reserve guard Miles McBride rotated from the weak side for a monster block of Pascal Siakam at the rim. McBride and Karl-Anthony Towns made a handful of free throws after the Pacers committed brutally ill-advised fouls on 3-point shooters. Towns, Josh Hart and Mitchell Robinson hauled in multiple tough rebounds. It was a collective effort to get the Knicks within striking distance of a 1-0 lead … and it was a collective effort to throw it away.
“We played 46 good minutes,” said Towns, who scored 35 points on 11-for-17 shooting with 12 rebounds in 39 minutes. “Those two minutes is where we lost the game.”
Bad shots taken early in the clock. Lackadaisical transition defense to allow Nesmith to continually walk into open shots in rhythm. Missed free throws and costly turnovers. Every one of them opened the door a bit wider, inviting Indiana to walk through … and then, after an Anunoby free throw put the