INDIANAPOLIS — Ultimately, they ran out of comebacks, and their drive to fight back barely sustained them. Depending on how the coming years unfold for the Knicks, they might regret the chance they squandered in these Eastern Conference finals.
The collapse in Game 1, which could’ve been forgotten had they managed to win the series, now earns a permanent spot in Knicks playoff heartaches, right alongside the Charles Smith debacle, the eight-points-in-nine-seconds lapse, the Finger Roll mishap, and the infamous 2-for-18 performance.
And this series? It joins the ranks of the Rockets in ’94, the Spurs in ’99, and the Pacers in 2000. The season concluded with a 125-108 defeat, marked by poor defense, careless turnovers, and perhaps Jalen Brunson’s most disappointing performance as a Knick. A season ends, aspirations are dashed, the journey derails, and it’s easy in the heat of the moment to feel upset with everyone involved.
Because everybody had a hand in this. Brunson. Karl-Anthony Towns, who scored 22 on a night when the Knicks probably needed him to score 42. In the end, as the Pacers’ lead grew and grew in the fourth, out of the reach of whatever pixie dust had sustained the Knicks the past seven weeks, it became a humiliating mess.
