The Indiana Pacers drew first blood in the Eastern Conference finals with an absolutely wild 138-135 Game 1 overtime win over the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. The Knicks held a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter and a nine-point edge in the final minute, yet the Pacers were able to come back and force overtime -- and eventually win the game -- through an incredible sequence of events, including Tyrese Haliburton's game-tying buzzer-beater that was inches away from being a game-winner and led to him recreating Reggie Miller's famous choke sign.
Let's take a look back at how we got from the Knicks appearing to walk away with Game 1 to the Pacers seizing all the momentum of the series with their third breathtaking comeback of the playoffs. Here are the eight moments from the fourth quarter and overtime of the conference finals' series opener that resulted in one of the wildest playoff games you'll ever see.
1. Knicks' 14-0 run without Brunson
The Knicks' best player went to the bench with five fouls early in the fourth quarter, and they proceeded to ... go on a 14-0 run and look like the best team in the NBA. Go figure. OG Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns and two dumb fouls by Indiana led to a Knicks avalanche as they built a 16-point lead with 7:22 left in the game.
The defense was been equally as impressive, with the Pacers got absolutely no space to create clean looks during the run.
At this point it looked like the Knicks were going to walk away with a solid Game 1 win, but little did they know the lunacy that was about to take place.
2. Nesmith goes nuclear
Tasked with guarding Brunson for most of the night, Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith was relatively quiet for the first three-and-a-half quarters of Wednesday's game. Then he somehow channeled Klay Thompson for an absolutely ridiculous stretch when his team needed him the most.
Nesmith made six 3s in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter -- each one more difficult than the last -- including three in the final minute to help cut New York's lead to two points with 23 seconds left. It was the most 3s ever made in the fourth quarter of an NBA playoff game, and tied for the most made in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter in any game in the play-by-play era (since 1997), according to CBS Sports Research.
Nesmith added another 3-pointer in overtime to make him 8 for 9 from deep on the night. The eight 3s are a new Pacers playoff record, and Nesmith finished with 30 points on the night.
3. Knicks miss key free throws
As both teams played the foul game (New York fouled the Pacers with a 3-point lead), both Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby missed key free throws down the stretch. Towns went 1 for 2 with 14 seconds left, and then Anunoby missed the first of his two free throws with seven seconds remaining.
Had they each made both, the Knicks probably escape with a Game 1 win. But the misses set up heroics and chaos in the final seconds (more on that later).
4. Knicks almost throw the ball away ... twice
As the game was slipping away, so were the Knicks ... quite literally. As they attempted to inbound the ball with 22 seconds left and a two-point lead, Josh Hart slipped near halfcourt as the ball was lobbed in his direction. Luckily he was able to regain his footing and retrieve the ball, which eventually led to Towns' trip to the free-throw line.
After intentionally fouling the Pacers, which cut the Knicks' lead to a single point, Hart inbounded the ball to Brunson in the coffin corner -- trapped between two defenders, the baseline and the sideline. Brunson appeared to attempt to throw the ball off of Nesmith, but instead it slipped through and bounced ... and bounced ... for what seemed like an eternity. It was a miracle in itself that no Indiana player picked off the pass, which ended up in the hands of Anunoby.
Moments like this show you just how discombobulated the Knicks were, and also that even in a horrific loss you can still have a little bit of luck go your way.
5. Haliburton plays the hero
With seven seconds left and the Pacers out of timeouts, Tyrese Haliburton dribbled the ball up the floor and appeared to have run out of options. He missed Myles Turner wide open for a wing 3-pointer and instead put his head down, dribbled to the 3-point line and let loose a trademark high-arcing jumper. The Knicks may have breathed an ever so temporary sigh of relief as the ball caromed straight up off the back of the rim. But because this game just couldn't be normal, of course gravity pulled the ball right back down through the hoop.
Most people in the building and watching on TV thought Haliburton had just won the game. As it turns out, however, that was not the case.
6. The premature choke sign
Haliburton said after the game he was waiting for the right moment to break out the classic "choke" symbol that Reggie Miller gave to the Knicks after their fourth-quarter collapse back in the 1994 playoffs. Little did he know, that moment would come so quickly in the series. After his miraculous shot, Haliburton grabbed his throat and looked toward Miller, who was calling the game for TNT.
Unfortunately for Haliburton and the Pacers ... and Miller, I guess ... Haliburton's toe was on the 3-point line and instead the two teams headed to overtime. It sounds like we may have seen the last of the celebration from Haliburton.
"It felt right at the time. If I would've known it was a 2, I would not have done it," Haliburton said after the game. "I might have wasted it. If I do it again, people might say I'm aura-farming. I don't plan on using it again."
7. Obi flies to the rescue
Against the team that drafted him, Pacers forward Obi Toppin saved his best for last in Game 1. After being quiet for most of the game, he came through with a rocking two-hand follow-up dunk with just under a minute left in overtime to give the Pacers a one-point lead.
As if that weren't enough, Toppin struck once again with 15 seconds left, throwing down a contorting, double-pump, two-hand dunk to extend the lead to the final three-point margin. This wasn't showboating, either. Toppin legitimately needed to pump and twist to avoid defender Mikal Bridges (who actually fouled him on the play, but it wasn't called).
Toppin is one of the more athletic bigs in the NBA, and Rick Carlisle clearly played the right card by having him out there during crunch time.
8. Bedlam on final play ... of course
There's only one way this game could end, and that is with complete and utter chaos. I'd attempt to describe what happened on the final play, but that wouldn't do it justice. Suffice it to say that four Knicks touched the ball, two shots were horribly missed, four players ended up on the ground and the ball wound up feebly trickling out of bounds with 0.2 seconds left.
We might not see another game like this in our lifetimes, let alone in this series. And to think, if even a couple of these plays had gone differently, we could be sitting here talking about a 1-0 lead for the Knicks.
