Down 14 with 3 minutes left, Tyrese Haliburton’s buzzer-beater sends Game 1 to overtime and helps Indiana stun New York.
NEW YORK — The Indiana Pacers do not play conventional NBA basketball in either their style of play or the way they win.
Their victory in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals was a lot more than unconventional. It was one of the craziest playoff games Madison Square Garden has ever seen, a 138-135 overtime thriller to edge the New York Knicks in which Indiana trailed by as many as 17 points in the fourth quarter.
Aaron Nesmith pulled the Pacers back, draining six 3-pointers in the final five minutes of regulation. The Knicks missed two big free throws. Tyrese Haliburton sent the game to overtime with a buzzer-beater that bounced high off the heel of the rim before falling through the net. Then, Andrew Nembhard made some big plays in the extra period.
A miraculous win for the Pacers. A heartbreaker for the Knicks, who had their share of miraculous comebacks against Boston in the last round.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Pacers improved to 7-0 in clutch games in the playoffs.
1. Nesmith catches fire
The Pacers’ offense is about ball and player movement, where everybody has opportunities to get buckets. Through the first two rounds, all five of their starters were averaging between 14.6 and 18.8 points per game.
But as Indiana came back from 17 points down with just over six minutes left in the fourth quarter on Wednesday, the offense wasn’t so egalitarian. The Pacers scored an amazing 31 points on their final 13 possessions of regulation, and Nesmith accounted for 20 of the 31. He shot 6-for-6 from 3-point range, also draining a huge pair of free throws when the Knicks fouled him with 12.4 seconds left so that he couldn’t attempt another three for the tie.
The first 3-pointer came with the Pacers putting Jalen Brunson into an action. Brunson hedged Nesmith’s screen for Haliburton, and then got caught in Thomas Bryant’s flare screen. Karl-Anthony Towns (Bryant’s defender) was hanging back at the free throw line, and Nesmith got a clean look at the top of the arc:
Towns was again slow to react on the next one, a pull-up from the left wing off an Obi Toppin screen.
After a Haliburton 3-pointer got the Pacers within 11, the Pacers again took advantage of Brunson. Ben Sheppard set a screen for Haliburton that Brunson hedged, help had to come when Sheppard rolled into the paint, and Nesmith was left alone on the weak side:
Now, he was rolling. And now, he was shot-hunting. Another pull-up before OG Anunoby could switch out, and the Pacers were down six with a little less than a minute left. After a Towns bucket seemingly stemmed the tide, Siakam set Nesmith up with a handoff and, again, Anunoby was a little too slow to contest.
“Each shot that he made,” Haliburton said, “just kept giving us more confidence that we could really win this game.”
Still down five with less than 30 seconds left, the Pacers needed more. And they got it when Nesmith ran off a pin-down and pulled up over a helpless Josh Hart. Two-point game with 22.1 seconds left.
The Knicks did their part by missing two free throws, and Haliburton hit the audacious stepback to tie the game at the buzzer. But Nesmith’s ridiculous shooting is the thing that should stand out most from this crazy game.
Nesmith finished with 30 points, tying his career high (regular season or playoffs). His eight 3-pointers (on nine attempts) were the most he’s ever made. Plus, he did that while handling the toughest assignment on the other end of the floor.
“To do what he did today,” Haliburton said, “while also having to guard Jalen Brunson for, probably, 30 minutes is very difficult to do. What Aaron Nesmith did today can’t be talked about enough.”
2. Pacers’ ridiculously efficient in clutch
The playoffs are funny because they’re high stakes, but small sample sizes. For six months, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics were the two best teams in the Eastern Conference by a wide margin, yet neither reached the conference finals.
Nesmith is a career 38% 3-point shooter, but he’s now 35-for-65 (54%) in the playoffs, and the Pacers won Game 1 because he was 6-for-6 in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter. On average, a 38% shooter should make two out of six shots, and if Nesmith does that, the Knicks are up 1-0 in this series.
If the Pacers reach the NBA Finals, it will be because they’ve shot ridiculously well on a small number of possessions. They’re now 6-0 in playoff games that were within five points in the last five minutes, having scored an amazing 69 points on 43 clutch offensive possessions, a rate of 1.6 points per possession.
That certainly isn’t sustainable over a heavier sample size, and the Pacers certainly don’t want to be facing any more 17-point deficits in the fourth quarter. But this was the one miracle they needed in this series.
3. Did the Knicks wear down?
The Knicks hand over a 17-point lead to the Pacers in the 4th quarter of Game 1, and ultimately the victory in overtime.
While some of the offensive numbers are unsustainable, there’s no denying that the Pacers have a great offense. They’re a pain in the butt to guard for 48 minutes, and even tougher for 53.
Perhaps the Knicks, with their heavy reliance on their five starters, lost this game because they were worn down in the closing minutes.
Nesmith was able to shoot a few of those 3-pointers because the Knicks were just a little slow switching out when he came off a screen. Then New York’s biggest defensive blunder came with the Knicks up one in overtime.
The Pacers got Brunson switched onto Haliburton. The Pacers’ point guard tried to take his counterpart off the dribble, but he didn’t need to, because Andrew Nembhard was wide open on a cut to the basket:
Nembhard wasn’t freed up by a screen, and the Knicks hadn’t run a double-team at Haliburton. But Hart had simply got caught ball-watching as Nembhard slipped to the rim for a layup that put the Pacers up one with 26.7 seconds left in OT.
Basketball 101. See the ball and your man.
The Knicks’ final lead of the game slipped away, not with a spectacular play from their opponent, but with a mental mistake, maybe a result of fatigue.
4. Knicks waste (another) spectacular Brunson performance
Statistically, this was the Pacers’ worst defensive game of the playoffs, mostly because of Brunson.
The Knicks’ point guard scored a game-high 43 points on 15-for-25 from the field and 12-for-14 from the line. And that was with Nesmith working his tail off to stay attached to Brunson through a myriad of ball screens.
Brunson did a lot of damage against other defenders when he got the opportunity. And he did almost all of his damage inside the arc. He shot just 1-for-6 from 3-point range but was 14-for-19 on 2-point shots, forcing his way into the paint for short floaters from every angle.
According to Second Spectrum tracking, Brunson shot 6-for-8 against Nesmith, with the final bucket coming just before Hart’s defensive breakdown. After waiving off Hart’s offer of a screen, he shook Nesmith with a jab step to his right before slicing past Haliburton’s help for one of his easiest buckets of the night:
Brunson appeared comfortable with whomever was in front of him. Nesmith, Nembhard, Sheppard, Bennedict Mathurin. It didn’t matter. The Pacers ran a couple of double-teams at him, but probably don’t want to do much of that going forward. Maybe they’ll just hope that he eventually misses a few more shots.
5. Carlisle wins two huge challenges
Two years ago, the Knicks did a summer study on the officiating challenges. They figured out which calls are most likely to be overturned and when’s the best time to challenge them.
But on this night, the Pacers were the team that took advantage of the rule.
The Knicks’ first challenge — an offensive foul call on Brunson early in the third quarter — was denied, so they were without any challenges for the final 26 minutes.
The Pacers held on to both of theirs until the final minute of the fourth quarter, and that helped win them the game.
The Knicks were still up five with 34 seconds left in the fourth and the Pacers’ defense was scrambled when the ball was inbounded to Brunson. But Anunoby fumbled Brunson’s pass, and when he tried to recover the ball, Pascal Siakam also got his hand on it.
The play was initially called a foul on Siakam, but Carlisle challenged the call. It was overturned, giving the Pacers the ball. Nesmith then hit his final 3-pointer on the ensuing possession, pulling Indiana within two.
Because the challenge was successful, the Pacers had another. And they used that one to overturn another call that didn’t go their way.
After Nembhard’s layup for the lead in overtime, Hart set an off-ball screen for Brunson on the left side of the floor. Nembhard got hit by the screen, but still managed to lunge and get his hand on Anunoby’s pass to Brunson:
The initial call was Knicks ball, but Nembhard called for a review. Carlisle obliged, the call was overturned, and the Pacers got the ball back.
Two high-leverage calls. Two challenges. Two reversals. Pacers win.
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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