With their season effectively on the line on Sunday, the New York Knicks erased 20-point deficit and came away with 106-100 win in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night. Led by Karl-Anthony Towns, who scored 20 points in the fourth quarter, the Knicks outscored the Pacers 36-20 in the final frame.
The Pacers led 55-35 with 3:20 left in the second quarter, but allowed New York to cut the lead to 13 points at halftime. The Knicks hung around after that, and Indiana missed a golden opportunity when its offense deteriorated in the fourth. If New York was kicking itself for collapsing in Game 1 at home, the Pacers will feel similarly after this one.
This was the Knicks' third 20-point comeback of the playoffs. It will be remembered as the game in which Towns caught fire out of nowhere. Through three quarters, the big man had scored four points on 2-for-8 shooting and committed four turnovers. He started the fourth with a 3 on the first possession and a driving layup on the next one. With Jalen Brunson on the bench -- first as part of his normal minutes pattern, then because he picked up his fifth foul -- Towns was the clear focal point of New York's offense, and he repeatedly delivered.
"He's got a hair trigger," Indiana coach Rick Carlisle told reporters, "and you think you're close enough to him and he just flicks the wrist. He hit some 3s, he got to the rim, he played great. He played great down the stretch."
Towns became the second Knick to score 20 points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game in the play-by-play era. The first was Brunson, last season, in Game 1 of New York's second-round series against Indiana.
This was far from a perfect game for Towns. He finished with six turnovers, and TNT's Stan Van Gundy correctly categorized several of his five fouls as "silly fouls." In an extremely high-stakes situation, though, he put the team on his back.
"We gotta get up [on Towns] and just do a better job of showing help in the gaps," Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton told reporters.
Brunson finished with 23 points on 6-for-18 shooting in 31 minutes. He made only one of his five 3-point attempts, but made all 10 of his free-throw attempts. The Clutch Player of the Year wasn't on the court for much of the final quarter, but he did make an enormous shot -- a tough floater over Aaron Nesmith -- with 1:17 left to put the Knicks up two.
New York guard Miles McBride played only one minute and 22 seconds in the first half because he picked up three fouls in that time. Late in the third quarter, though, McBride went on a personal 7-0 run. He stayed on the floor for most of the fourth, too, and helped the Knicks get the Pacers' offense in the mud.
"I thought his intensity was huge for us," Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau told reporeters. "He's a catalyst -- his defense, his hustle. And I think it gives people energy when you see him flying around like that."
In some unusual lineups, McBride shared the floor with Delon Wright and Landry Shamet, both of whom were previously out of the rotation. Cam Payne didn't see the floor at all, with Thibodeau deciding to lean into more defense-oriented combinations. On a related note, the Pacers scored just 42 second-half points. Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner combined for 56 points but shot just 3 for 15 from deep. Indiana collectively shot 5 for 25 (20%) from 3-point range, including 1 for 8 (12.5%) in the fourth quarter.
"They had a lot of their better defenders in the game in the second half, and that makes it harder," Carlisle said. "And so you gotta grind defensively to get rebounds and there's a different element of grinding when you're going against their better guys. So we're going to have to do better in a lot of those situations."
For the first time this season, Thibodeau elected to change New York's starting lineup with all of its starters available. Mitchell Robinson replaced Josh Hart in the first five, and Hart told reporters afterward that he had suggested this move to Thibodeau, via the New York Post. Hart said they'd talked about doing this before Game 6 of the Knicks' second-round series against the Boston Celtics, too.
Robinson has been by far the Knicks' most important defender throughout the playoffs. Despite this move, though, Indiana looked pretty comfortable offensively for the majority of the game. That changed late in the third quarter, though, and the Pacers couldn't find their flow once the game got tight.
The Pacers are still favored to win the series (-220 at FanDuel), and Game 4 is Tuesday in Indianapolis.
