INDIANAPOLIS — This has always been a hell of a city to try to win the basketball playoffs. Once upon a time, the old Market Square Arena was rattling for an hour before tipoff, and the Pennsylvania announcer was exhorting:pacer people! ” to make matters particularly difficult for visitors.
Market Square Arena was also where Elvis Presley performed his last concert on June 26, 1977, and there were several things to see there. The Knicks would come here and look around and hear all the sound effects that mimicked the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. One day, Patrick Ewing was moved by these words and said, But I feel the hatred here. ”
Gainbridge Fieldhouse is an architectural marvel and a worthy successor that seeks to incorporate Indiana’s bandbox basketball tradition into a modern NBA facility. It was the perfect environment for a very competitive Game 3 on Friday night. Indy probably couldn’t match New York’s Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and Spike Lee, but it had Edgerrin James, and it had Roy Hibbert.
And finally, they weren’t going to let the Knicks steal a game that was completely stealable.
In theory, carryover should not exist. Looking at it from 30,000 feet with cool, dispassionate eyes, the Knicks are 6-3 in the playoffs, with two losses — Game 5 against Philadelphia and Friday’s Game 3 against Indiana — and they’re at their core. They lost because someone knocked on the spot. Descend 30 feet of prayer.
The Knicks are the perfect road team, even if that fades. They are unfazed by hostile environments. They are not influenced by big leads. There were good reasons for them to come out victorious on Friday, but instead the general feeling when the game ended was that they were going to let something slip away other than a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter. I thought it would be.
Again, they’re not a team that lingers, and that serves as a nice antidote to this path. After Tyrese Maxey tried to break his spirit in Game 5 of the first round, the Knicks easily defeated the Sixers at Wells Fargo Center. And now, with a day and a half to recover from the Pacers’ 111-106 victory in Game 3, they will take another crack at the heart of downtown on Sunday.
“It’s all about mindset for us,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “We don’t worry about what we can’t control, so we focus on what we can do. We don’t have to worry about outside attention or outside noise.”
It will be noisy on a Sunday afternoon, no doubt about that. There will be 17,274 people in attendance, but only a handful of Knicks fans will be able to speak out for the cause.
And the Pacers are doing well at home. When they lost 108-103 to Cleveland here on March 18, their record at home remained at 21-15. But this was the last time they fell here. They finished the season with five straight wins, especially against the Lakers, Thunder and Heat, winning all three games of the opening series here against Milwaukee and sweeping Friday night’s game against the Knicks.
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This is their ninth game in a row, and while they certainly looked shaky and vulnerable on Friday, they may have a limping Tyrese Haliburton leading the way on Sunday, but they have their home court as their own. I found a way to make it work.
The Knicks still have two home games left. Even if they get that far, they can still win Game 7. That’s why they worked so hard and ran the tape in Game 82. They have cushions.
But we’ve also seen what happens in these series. Back in the 1990s, the Knicks held serve at home two years in a row and took an early 2-0 lead (1993 vs. Bulls, 1994 vs. Pacers), then won twice at home and gained confidence. I made them put on. They returned to their home court and carried that momentum into Game 5 at the Garden. The Knicks survived in 1994, but not in 1993.
That’s why Game 3 hurt more than anything else. The Knicks were looking to steal an unlikely game. they didn’t. They were able to make the Pacers believe they were back in the series. It shouldn’t be that way. But if they can win 10 straight home games on Sunday, they will. And 2 out of 3 will be the best.
In that scenario, it’s good to have two bookend games at the Garden, but it’s even better to have Game 7 there. But it’s best if you don’t need the game anymore. The Knicks will be looking at that starting Sunday.
