Jalen Brunson scores 44 points to lead Knicks to Game 5 blowout of Pacers, 3-2 lead
NEW YORK -- After hammering the Knicks at Gainbridge Fieldhouse with a 32-point win in Game 4 to tie the series, the Pacers got to feel the other side of a beatdown in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden, falling 121-91 to New York on Tuesday night.
The Knicks take a 3-2 lead and have a chance to close out the series in Game 6 on Friday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The game will be at 6 p.m. if Boston and Cleveland also have a Game 6, 8:30 p.m. if that series is over.
Here are four observations.
Jalen Brunson returns to form
The wear and tear of playing 40+ minutes in every game combined with a foot injury suffered in Game 2 seemed to finally take its toll on Jalen Brunson in Games 3 and 4 in Indianapolis. The Pacers decision to use Aaron Nesmith as the primary defender on him also seemed to have an effect as Brunson was held to 26 points on 10 of 26 shooting in Game 3 and 18 points on 6 of 17 shooting in Game 4 after entering those two games averaging well over 30 per game in the playoffs.
But a day of rest clearly did wonders for Brunson who seemed more than a little re-energized in his return to the Garden. The spinning, twisting, bowling ball of a guard yet again found ways of creating space through contact and motion and hitting mid-range jumpers whenever he got any kind of space to operate. He scored 10 points in the first quarter on 5 of 9 shooting then went off for 18 in the second quarter, making 7 of 9 shots to go into the half with 28. He finished with 44 points on 18 of 35 shooting, hitting 2 of 6 3-pointers and dishing out seven assists.
Of Brunson's 18 field goals, 13 of them came in the paint. Eight of those came within 5 feet of the rim.
"I was just finding a way," Brunson said. "That's really just it. There was nothing special about it, it was just looking for a way to get it done."
Nesmith had some level of success when he was on him, but the Pacers tried to mix up the matchups and some went better than others. Guard Andrew Nembhard had the assignment late in the first half and that went particularly poorly as that matchup has been a struggle for Nembhard all series. Brunson scored eight points in one two-minute stretch in the second quarter when Nesmith was off the floor, then had two more buckets before the end of the half when Nesmith was on the bench, so 14 of his 18 points in the quarter were with Nembhard defending him.
Knicks hammer Pacers on the glass
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said in his pre-game press conference that the most important thing his team needed to understand was that if they didn't go out and hit somebody they would get crushed. They certainly didn't hit the Knicks hard enough to keep them off the backboards, and the rebounding battle became a huge problem.
The Knicks outrebounded the Pacers 13-5 in the first quarter and had more offensive boards (seven) than the Pacers had total rebounds. That dynamic didn't change in the second quarter as the Knicks outrebounded the Pacers 27-11 and had 12 offensive rebounds. They scored 13 second-chance points to the Pacers six before halftime. Center Isaiah Hartenstein had seven rebounds, all of them on the offensive glass. That disparity helped the Knicks take 53 field goal attempts to the Pacers' 38, building a 69-54 lead at the break.
The second half didn't get much better as the Knicks finished with 53 rebounds to the Pacers' 29, 20 offensive rebounds to the Pacers' five and 26 second-chance points to the Pacers' nine. Hartenstein finished with 17 rebounds, 12 of them offensive. Josh Hart had 11 and Donte DiVincenzo had 11.
"It's just the cold-blooded desire to get the ball," Carlisle said. "To make contact with somebody and go get the ball. That's what it is. And we did not do it. And we paid a heavy price."
As much as the offensive rebounding helped the Knicks score, it also suffocated the Pacers' uptempo offense as Indiana was held to 91 points, a season low in either the regular season or the postseason. The Knicks ended up with 101 field goal attempts to the Pacers' 72, making 47 to their 31. The 72 field goal attempts were by far a season low in either the regular season or playoffs. They were held under 80 just twice in the regular season, though they won both of those games against the Hawks and the Magic, making 67.1% of their shots in a Jan. 12 win over Atlanta. The 31 made field goals were also the fewest in either the regular season or playoffs with the previous low being 34 against the Bulls on March 27. They were 1-8 in the regular season in games in which they made 40 or fewer shots. They were also held to 36 in each of their losses in the Milwaukee series.
After a 32-point first quarter, the Pacers didn't score more than 22 in a period again. In the third, they followed three consecutive 3-pointers from center Myles Turner with a seven-minute stretch in which they didn't score a field goal and scored just one point. The Knicks went on a 19-1 run and that effectively put the game away.
"Where we excel in so well is getting out in transition and running," Haliburton said. "It's difficult to do that when you're taking the ball out of the net every play. Really, I think the biggest thing that hurt us offensively was the rebounding because we never played in transition if that makes sense. Those two go hand in hand. The better we can do rebounding the ball, the better we can do in transition."
Miles McBride, Alec Burks burn Pacers
Following OG Anunoby's injury, the Knicks initially decided to go with a bigger lineup with Precious Achiuwa at power forward. However, in the second half of Sunday's Game 4 they moved point guard Miles McBride into the starting lineup, shifting 6-4 Josh Hart down to the 4.
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau stuck with that lineup on Tuesday. It didn't cost him anything on defense or on the glass and it brought more scoring out of both the starting lineup and the bench.
McBride scored 17 points on 7 of 15 shooting, including 3 of 7 from 3-point range.
"He was great," Brunson said. "He was fantastic. He brought energy from the start. He was just doing what he does."
Alec Burks, who didn't see much playoff action until this series got 23 minutes off the bench and scored 18 points on 6 of 11 shooting including 5 of 8 from 3-point range. The Pacers defended sharpshooter Donte DiVincenzo relatively well holding him to eight points on 4 of 14 shooting, but those two and 18 points from Hart gave the Knicks more than enough production to build around Brunson.
"We anticipated them starting McBride over Achiuwa today just for more spacing," Haliburton said. "They stretched us out more defensively, and they just made shots. And the ones they missed, they grabbed offensive rebounds."
Tyrese Haliburton bottled up
After scoring just six points in Game 1 on just six field goal attempts, Tyrese Haliburton vowed to be more aggressive and get downhill off the dribble more and did so in Games 2, 3 and 4, scoring 34, 35 and 20 points respectively, playing just 28 minutes in Game 4 because of the 32-point blowout.
Whether he lost that level of aggression or the Knicks took it away from him with well timed blitzes and double teams, Haliburton's stat line in Game 5 looked a lot more like the one he had in Game 1. At halftime, he had just seven points on 2 of 4 shooting. He was a little more aggressive in the second half but the Knicks kept him from really getting rolling and he finished with 13 points on 5 of 9 shooting with just five assists.
"I just gotta do a better job of being aggressive," Haliburton said. "If we go back to Game 1, I said the same thing after Game 1. It's more on me than it is on what anybody else is doing. I'll fix that."
Haliburton did acknowledge, however, that the Knicks did a good job of defending him. DiVincenzo had been the primary on him for the first four games with Hart picking him up on occasion. McBride got the assignment, however and picked him up in full-court denial mode and made it difficult for Haliburton to involve himself in the offense.
"Obviously he had great impact in the two games in Indy," McBride said. "Just scoring. Being able to facilitate. I just wanted to limit his touches because he can't do any of those things if he doesn't have the ball."
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jalen Brunson's 44 points help Knicks pound Pacers in Game 5
