Knicks vs Hicks: The War Resumes

Let's dig into the 8th postseason meeting between the longtime rivals.

Good morning! It’s almost go time, but before we get to today’s newsletter, want to let everyone know that Autograph is giving one lucky fan claim a pair of Game 1 tickets in Section 222 for $200/per ticket (60 percent off face value). If you’re interested, slide into the DM’s of the KFS Twitter account and let us know you’re interested!

Game Night

TONIGHT: Pacers at Knicks at Sixers, 7:30 pm, TNT

Injury Report: In a slightly surprising development, Tyrese Haliburton was listed as Questionable for Game 1 with back spasms. Something tells me he’ll find his way onto the court when all is said and done.

Halftime: Giddy UP. Here’s the link.

What to watch for: Get ready for 4000+ words to answer that question below. For now, here’s the series schedule for anyone who may have missed it:

• Wednesday, 5/8 at 8pm, TNT

• Friday, 5/10 at 7pm, ESPN

• Sunday, 5/12 at 3:30, ABC

• Tuesday, 5/14, time TBD, TNT

• Friday, 5/17, time TBD, ESPN

• Tuesday, 5/19, time TBD, channel TBD

Knicks vs Hicks: Tale of the Tape

Much like the last series, it’s very hard to look towards the regular season for evidence of what we’re going to get in this matchup.

With Philly, we had the looming uncertainty of Joel Embiid’s health and the impact he’d be able to have on the series. For Indy, health is also part of the story - more on that shortly - but it’s far from the whole story.

In mid-January, they traded Bruce Brown and picks for Pascal Siakam, and then dealt Buddy Hield to Philly a few weeks later. Those two trades effectively turned over three fifths of their starting lineup, with Siakam taking over for Obi Toppin at the four and Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard slotting in for the departed Hield and Bruce Brown.

Those changes obviously altered the complexion of their team from an offense-only attack to a more balanced group, but the real shift in Indy’s season came before either of those two trades went through.

Tyrese Haliburton went down with a hamstring injury on January 8 against Boston. At the time, he was a front-runner for one of the five 1st Team All-NBA spots, having guided Indy to the In-Season Tournament Finals and generally looking like the best guard in the East.

After the injury though, Hali missed 10 of the next 11 games before returning on a minutes limit. He has not been the same player ever since:

• First 33 games: 23.8 points, 12.5 assists, 2.5 turnovers, 49.7 FG%, 40.3 3P%

• Last 36 games: 16.9 points, 9.5 assists, 2.1 turnovers, 45.4 FG%, 32.3 3P%

• 1st Round vs MIL: 16.0 points, 9.3 assists, 2.7 turnovers, 43.5 FG%, 29.6 3P%

The biggest difference has been in Haliburton’s ability to pull up off the dribble from deep. In 33 games before the injury, Hali was third in the league in pull-up 3-point attempts, trailing only Luka and Trae Young. More importantly, he hit those shots at a 39.1 percent clip.

That conversion rate was tops among the league’s 10 highest volume pull-up 3-point shooters through January 8, the date of his injury. Because defenders had to fear the threat of his jumper at all times, it left them vulnerable to Hali’s drives into the paint. From there, one of the league’s pre-eminent passers could pick apart defenses at will.

For that reason, the Pacers were not only the best offense in the league prior to his injury, but Haliburton was clearly driving them to that lofty terrain:

• Pacers offensive rating, Haliburton on court (through 1/8): 125.3

• Pacers offensive rating, Haliburton off court (through 1/8): 115.2

Since Tyrese returned from injury, Indy’s offense has still been quite good - 119.6 points per 100 possessions starting with Hali’s first game back, good for second in the league over that span - but they haven’t been as otherworldly as they once were. Of greater concern is that they’re more or less the same whether Haliburton has been on the floor or not.

(Credit backup point guard and noted pest TJ McConnell for that. He has the best on/off numbers on the team since late January, and the offense in particular seems to ebb and flow with his presence more than Haliburton’s in that time. Individually, he’s blown away Hali on a per-36 minute basis over the last three months.)

While the drop off since the injury isn’t solely due to pull-up 3-point shooting, it’s tough to ignore how far that part of his game has fallen. Since January 30, Tyrese is hitting just 29.1 percent of pull-up threes, and doing so on lower volume (179 attempts in 36 games versus 220 in the first 33).

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of this regression. The reason Haliburton fell out of the top 10 in the 2020 draft to begin with was largely due to questions about his ability to “create” shots for himself off the dribble. He doesn’t have the power, handle or speed to get by guys, instead relying of craft and guile to find seems in the defense. When defenders are able to play further off of him (or go below screens) because they don’t fear his pull-up jumper, that job becomes far more difficult.

It’s an over-simplification to say that the Pacers live or die based on whether Haliburton can find the range (they’re 26-11 in games he hits three or more triples and 18-10 in games he doesn’t), but it is a significant factor, and may be a bellwether for this series. The real question comes down to how much respect New York will pay this more limited version of the star guard, and in turn, who will have the primary task of guarding him?

In OG Anunoby, the Knicks have the defensive queen of the chessboard, and someone who Thibs will be tempted to stick on Hali at least some of the time. In the last series, there was no one-on-one matchup that was ideal for OG’s talents, simply because Tyrese Maxey is too damn quick for any one defender, while Joel Embiid is too damn big.

This series is a different story. Anunoby should be able to swallow up Haliburton if the Knicks choose to deploy him in that way, and if he’s able to go under screens (again, a product of not fearing the threat of Hali’s pull-up), then Indy will have a far more difficult time getting him switched off. Of course, we don’t know what that one-on-one matchup will look like because the All-Defense forward hasn’t played a single second against the Pacers in a Knicks uniform.

On the flip side, Pascal Siakam is an All-Star caliber player in his own right. He’s cooled off a bit after starting the playoffs with 73 points and 24 rebounds over the first two Bucks games, but he’s still a threat to wreak havoc as both a scorer and a passer.

Given how the most obvious OG alternative to defend the 6'8" Pascal is the 6'4" Josh Hart, it might make more sense to deploy Anunoby on his former Toronto teammate and trust that Hart or DiVincenzo can hang with this more limited version of Haliburton. This would carry the additional benefit of letting OG roam a bit more as a help defender on possessions where Siakam is plopped in the corner. Pascal hit 38.6 percent of his threes following the trade to Indy but is just a 33 percent deep-baller over his career and was just 6-for-22 against Milwaukee.

The only other possibility, and one that I’d expect Thibs to use as a wrinkle as opposed to his base defense out of the gate, is to park New York’s center on Siakam and then have one of Hart or Anunoby on Myles Turner. This would, in theory, allow Hartenstein or Robinson to hang back closer to the paint while putting a more mobile body on Turner, who absolutely torched the Bucks in round one to the tune of 18 threes in 41 attempts.

Historically, New York has been comfortable letting the 35.4 percent career 3-point shooter fire away distance. How much respect they pay Turner’s range will be worth watching from the outset.

Overall, the current Pacers starting five has a very solid plus-6.4 net rating in 444 minutes since it debuted on February 4, except it hasn’t achieved that rating in the way that you’d think. The 113.6 offensive rating for this unit is middle of the pack league-wide (albeit with a pretty spectacular 70.2 assist rate), but they sport a defensive rating that would lead the league. More on that in a bit. The main takeaway is that Indiana isn’t blowing the doors off their opponents with their first five, but rather with their bench.

The Pacers three primary reserves - McConnell, rookie Ben Sheppard and old buddy Obi Toppin - have a 123.0 offensive rating together since Indy went to its current rotation back in early February. Just as significant, they sport a very respectable 110.7 defensive rating in that time. When those three are in, the Pacers are blowing the doors off teams in large part because they run opponents out of the gym with a 104.5 pace that would lead the league by a mile.

That won’t come as a surprise to many Knicks fans who watched Obi leak out in transition so often in New York, but it does present an interesting conundrum. Indy was a bottom-five defensive rebounding team this season, and only fared a bit better after they remade their team prior to the deadline. Milwaukee never put much pressure on them via the offensive glass in that series, mostly because of no Giannis and Brook Lopez hanging out behind the arc so often.

New York is a different beast, and the push and pull of Indy’s transition game versus the Knicks; penchant for second chance opportunities will be another measuring stick for this series.

(Two other tidbits worth noting…first, Indy is middle of the pack when it comes to forcing opponents’ turnovers. Outside of some late game snafus in Game 5, the Knicks were pretty good at taking care of the ball against Philly, and will need to remain so. Second, no team in the league puts opposing teams on the line more than the Pacers. This is a relative strength of New York, and they were excellent at drawing fouls against Philly, with Jalen Brunson currently second to Joel Embiid in postseason free throw attempts per game.)

Ultimately, you figure the Knicks are going to be able to defend at a commensurate rate, even considering the high powered offense they’re facing. In four postseason series under Thibs, defense has never been an issue, and they’ve been rock solid on that end since acquiring OG Anunoby.

In many ways, trying to defend the two-man game of Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey was the perfect preparation for this matchup. Countering Embiid’s shooting was great practice for what they’ll face with Turner, and the pinpoint rotations they needed to make while defending Philly’s stars will be needed to fend off Indy’s supreme passing accumen.

Whether the Knicks can get out of this series without much stress or whether we’re headed for a tighter, longer affair will likely come down to how well they can score. Indy’s defense has steadily improved since midseason, and as noted above, their first five has put up an elite rating over a significant sample size.

For Indy, it’s almost too obvious of a move to slot Myles Turner on a non-center (either Josh Hart or OG) and then have Siakam guard New York’s center. That way, Indy can just switch New York’s high pick and rolls and give Pascal a chance to fluster Brunson with his length. Jalen could simply avoid bringing the big in to screen, but both Nesmith and Nembhard are solid wings with decent enough size to make Brunson work for his food.

That brings us to the one name we haven’t said yet, which is Donte DiVincenzo (and to a lesser extent, OG Anunoby, if indeed Indy decides to cover him with one of the 6'5" wings). Indy could plop Hali onto DiVo, which means guard-guard screening actions between Donte and Jalen have a chance to bear fruit. Haliburton has good length, but he’s by far the softest spot in the Pacers’ starting defense, at least until they start tapping into their bench. If they try to hide Hali on Hart, we could a repeat of the last series (fire away, Josh!) or the Knicks could bring Hart into the action as a screener, perhaps giving Indy the chance to put two on the ball and challenge New York to play 4-on-3 - a strategy Philly rarely employed.

(How relentlessly the Knicks attack Toppin when he’s in the game, and how much Thibs tries to line up Jalen’s minutes with Obi’s, is yet another subtopic of great interest, as is whether Brunson can attack the pesky McConnell, who brings incredible toughness and savvy but lacks size.)

As much as they have at any point this season, the Knicks - and Jalen in particular - must trust the pass in this series. Getting Indy into rotations isn’t only the best way to generate good shots, but the surest way to secure offensive rebounds.

If I had to guess, that would be the formula to make this a short series in New York’s favor. Much like they did to the Cavs last year, they need to dominate the offensive glass, but also take care of the ball and limit the times when Indy can get out in transition. That way, they can utilize their physicality and avoid this becoming the sort of finesse series that Indiana would surely prefer.

From there, there is one final line they must toe, and this will be something of a new challenge: making sure the Pacers’ role players don’t beat them while also giving the proper attention to their stars. In Indy’s four wins against Milwaukee, Siakam and Haliburton combined for just 39.2 percent, 28.9 percent, 29.3 percent and 30 percent of the Pacers’ points, respectively. Those are wildly low numbers compared to New York’s last series, when Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey combined for 58 percent of Philly’s point total. This will be a very, very different assignment.

On the bright side, we can be sure they’ll be ready to face it head on.

Now for three other random thoughts on the series before we get to today’s mini-mailbag…

🏀 Much has been made of whether or nor Tom Thibodeau should extend his rotation past seven men. I get it; seven men is the sort of rotation you’d see in the last several games of an NBA Finals series, not when the calendar has barely flipped to May.

Except I wonder if we should be making such a big deal of it.

Josh Hart has been a 40-minute player since Julius went down. If he is tiring at the end of these games, he shows precisely zero signs of it. It’s fair to pencil him in for 44 minutes a night.

Donte DiVincenzo isn’t far behind, having averaged 38 minutes over the final three months of the regular season and playing all 48 minutes of the deciding Game in Philly. Against the Sixers, Donte’s minutes were dictated less by energy and more by effectiveness between him an Deuce, and this feels like a series DiVincenzo should thrive in.

Speaking of McBride, he was logging over 26 minutes a night vs Philly prior to Game 6, and there’s no reason to believe he won’t be up around that number once again.

That brings us to Jalen and OG (because while the center minutes will prove interesting, they aren’t relevant to the issue of adding anther player to the perimeter rotation). If we low-ball it and give them each 38 minutes a pop, presuming 44 for Hart, 38 for DiVincenzo and 26 for Deuce, that only leaves eight minutes to fill, or roughly five in the first half and three after halftime.

(For what it’s worth, I find it highly unlikely that Brunson will play this little in any game. In non-blowout, non-foul trouble playoff games for the Knicks, he is averaging exactly 43 minutes a night. Also, think of the unsettling feeling in the pit of your stomach every possession New York attempts to score without Brunson on the court. 10 minutes of rest time equates to about a dozen such possessions. That’s too many, especially with Bogey sidelined.)

My guess: Alec Burks will get a shot, but in the minutes Brunson is on the court. JB has been playing the entire first quarter and then resting to start the second. Perhaps Burks checks in with Brunson with around eight minutes to go in the half, and gives Josh Hart his first (and maybe only) rest during that time. Brunson and Burks only played 109 minutes together in the regular season, but the team drew dead even during that time. It was the non-Brunson minutes where Burks’ issues really popped up.

🏀 The obvious alternative is Precious Achiuwa, who I believe will have a role in this series. I’m just not sure it’s at the four.

If we again presuppose that Hart is good for almost every one of the 48 minutes, that means almost all of the Precious minutes that don’t come at center will result in New York putting three players on the court at once who Indiana doesn’t need to guard behind the arc (or at least doesn’t need to guard too closely, in Hart’s case). If the Precious minutes come with Mitch, that makes the offense highly untenable.

Granted, New York has succeeded with Precious at the four before, as it was their starting unit (along with Brunson, Hart, I-Hart and DiVo) for about a month and a half when OG first went down. In 13 games together, they generated a 119.5 offensive rating and had some big wins against the Sixers, Magic, and in maybe the game of the regular season, these very Pacers.

They also went through periods of immense struggle. Who can forget what the Lakers’ defense did to them down the stretch of the game that ended their winning streak, or how it took them nearly six minutes to score a point against Golden State, or how they put up just 73 points against the Sixers at home?

Maybe if Brunson plays those minutes and they come when Hart gets a breather, it could work, but would they be any better than minutes where Burks is parked in the corner, forcing Indy to at least honor the threat of his jumper? We shall see.

It might come down to this: does the benefit of Burks on offense in an off-ball role outweigh the drawbacks of him as a defender, or is Precious that superior of a defensive player that Thibs will live with some clogged-toilet spacing in that hope that offensive rebounding will make up the difference?

🏀 How dare I tug on Superman’s cape, but I have to at least ask the question: can Jalen Brunson possibly keep this up?

According to Basketball Reference, JB is currently leading the playoffs with a 36.8 usage rate. Since the NBA started tracking usage rate in 1967, there have only been 18 postseasons in which a guard made it to at least the second round while carrying at least a 35 usage rate and playing over 30 minutes a night, and nearly half of those were by some guy named Michael Jordan:

It’s possible to keep up this pace and advance to the conference finals - AI, D-Rose, Harden, Trae and Luka have all done it since MJ - but it sure as hell ain’t gonna be easy.

Mini-Mailbag

Kyle M asks… Which team has the biggest bench X-factor and how will the other team implore their defense to keep them from getting hot?

It’s Mitch for New York and McConnell for Indy.

TJ gave Deuce massive fits on both ends earlier this season, and that could be a matchup the Pacers look to exploit again. He’s also the sort of energy player who can come in and completely disrupt an opposing team’s momentum. On the flip side, Brunson can target the smaller McConnell when the two share the floor (assuming TJ doesn’t force him or some other Knick into an eight-second violation, because he’s that damn annoying).

As for Robinson, if the guy who we saw at the beginning of this season reappears, the Pacers don’t have a prayer of keeping him off the glass, especially in the non-Turner minutes. He was a beast on the offensive boards vs Philly but was rarely able to convert those caroms into points. If the old Mitch shows up, watch out.

Vince N asks…Do you see Precious as part of an 8-man rotation as the backup four, or solely as a backup five in case Mitch has problems keeping up with the Pacers fast bigs?

The latter. Precious can give Indy a different look, and one that could come in handy if Robinson doesn’t quite have the lateral quickness to keep up with Pacer bench lineups that feature Siakam at the five and Obi at the four.

That said, I’d prefer if Mitch can hold his own on defense and in transition in those minutes, for the reasons I stated in the last answer.

Jonas P asks…Precious did well when he matched up against Siakam during the season, could we see that matchup for stretches again?

Again, is he at the four or the five? If we’re talking about the minutes when Indy rolls out the Pascal/Obi 4/5 combo, Precious at the four would leave Mitch (or I-Hart) needing to run around chasing Obi (no thanks), unless Achiuwa takes Toppin, which goes against your premise here.

So this just gets us back to Achiuwa vs Robinson as the backup five. Let’s see what Mitch has before relegating him to the pine in a series he could own if he’s feeling right.

Rick Fromberg asks…Can you think of an example of a team in recent memory making a deep run with just a 7-man rotation? Is it feasible? I know the 7SOL Suns had that reputation, even if it wasn’t fully warranted.

You nailed it. In the ‘05 and ‘06 West Semis, the Suns won with essentially seven guys. In 2005, all five starters averaged at least 38 minutes in a six-game defeat of the Mavs, with sixth man Joe Johnson playing 31 minutes a game and reserve guard Leandro Barbosa averaging 12.6. The eighth man, OAKAAK Walter McCarty played just under 10 minutes a night.

The next year, in a seven game defeat of the Spurs in the same round, things got even tighter, as Barbosa averaged 31.7 minutes as the sixth man and James Jones 15.7 minutes as the seventh guy. No other player saw more than 13 total minutes of court time in the series.

Jessica asks…What do you reckon will be the biggest challenge for the Knicks this series?

Part of me wants to say the threat of Turner’s 3-ball, but I’m just not sure they’re really going to care. You know Myles is going to have a game where he lights it up, as he did by going 7-for-9 from deep in Indy’s Game 4 win against Milwaukee. But in the other five games, he was 11-of-32, which is a take and hit rate the Knicks will happily live with.

So I’ll go with this instead: how will the Knicks fare during the Pacers’ bench minutes, particularly if they coincide with the non-Brunson minutes? New York won the first round thanks to what they did with Joel Embiid on the bench because Philly’s offense remains largely incompetent without the big guy. Things won’t be nearly as easy against the Pacers, and it will take an extreme amount of discipline to slow down their go-go reserves. On the flip side, if New York can own the glass during this time, it can flip their advantage on its head.

Alex asks… Assuming Giannis and Dame would have played at least some of the games, would you have preferred this matchup over facing the Bucks?

Maybe famous last words, but I prefer the Pacers over a Bucks team that would have had even a limited version of Giannis by Game 2 or 3.

Ganesh asks…Which is the greatest Knicks / Pacers playoff moment?

Ganesh referenced this thread in his question, which highlights a bunch of top moments. I’m obviously biased, looking at things from a Knicks perspective, but if I attempt to take off my orange and blue glasses and make a list from the perspective of an NBA historian merely ranking the plays that have the most lasting imprint on the collective souls of NBA fans everywhere, I’d separate a clear top six, ordered as such:

1. Reggie’s “choke” gesture amidst scoring 25 fourth quarter points in Game 5 of the ‘94 East Finals

2. LJ’s 4-point play to secure a Game 3 win in ‘99

3. Reggie’s eight points in 8.9 seconds in Game 1 of ‘95

4. Ewing’s putback dunk to send New York to the ‘94 Finals, and subsequently standing on a folding chair court-side with arms fully extended.

   (I know this seems three spots too low. I just don’t know how much the average NBA fan cares about this moment, or for younger fans, even knows it happened. Every NBA fan knows the choke moment, which transcended sports because Spike was involved. Similarly, “the 4-point play” and “8 points in 9 seconds” are shorthand references forever etched in NBA lore. Ewing’s putback was the seminal moment of his great career, but much like said career, it sadly gets underrated by people who will always focus on Patrick’s shortcomings rather than his achievements.)

5. Hibbert’s block on Melo at the end of Game 6 in 2013

6. Ewing’s missed finger roll in Game 7 of ‘95

Camby’s Game 6 performance in ‘99 is as good an individual effort as any player has ever put up in this series, but there was no single moment or sequence that lives on as an easily disseminated clip, so it doesn’t make the list.

Finally, some all-Patrick Honorable mentions: Ewing’s game winner in Game 5 of the ‘95 semis (the first time in my life I ever cried tears of joy)…Ewing howling to the rafters after missing a potential game-tying shot in the closing moments of Game 2 in ‘99… “See you Sunday” before Game 6 of the ‘95 East semis.

That’s all for today! See you tomorrow morning with the first postgame recap of the East semis!

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”