Not Today

What do we say to the God of Death? DE-FENSE.

Good morning!

Enjoy this one everyone, at least until tip off on Saturday night. We all earned it.

Game 5: Knicks 111, Pacers 94

Over the course of the previous 98 games, this Knicks team had found itself in just about every situation imaginable, but having their backs against the wall was not one of them.

With the amount of inconsistency they’ve shown, coming off a Game 4 loss in which the Pacers appeared to be hitting their stride, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to expect a letdown in front of the home fans with their season on the line.

If the task at hand involved playing an acceptable level of defense for 48 minutes, well then we really had good reason to be skeptical given the available sample size. After all, the Pacers generated a 121.1 offensive rating over the first four games of this series. That number would have bested even the league-leading Cavaliers, who set the all-time mark for offensive efficiency over the first 82 games. The one game Indiana struggled to score was, according to them, more due of self-inflicted stagnation than anything the Knicks did. If New York was going to save their season with a defensive effort for the ages, it would be coming at least somewhat out of the blue.

More that that, it would need to come from an unlikely source.

As bad as the overall defensive rating was coming into last night, it was especially bad in Jalen Brunson’s minutes. Indiana was scoring 129.0 points per 100 possessions when the Knicks’ starting point guard was on the court and just 98.3 when he was off. There was no disputing that New York needed Brunson’s offense to get them back to Indiana for a Game 6. The only question was whether they could survive at the other end of the floor.

Well for one game at least, that question was answered in the affirmative.