After the collapse of match 1, Knicks must once again prove that they were made for this moment

Athletics has live coverage of Pacers VS Knicks Game 2 from the finals of the East Conference of the NBA 2025.

New York – The most negligent game of a historical collapse has not even led to a disaster. Everything he did was showing the most annoying features of New York Knicks.

A team that had fought with the final of the Eastern Conference – a team that ended a series of playoffs in the first round on a dagger altering the franchise of Jalen Brunson, then shot down the champions in title with two -digit returns – could not hinder basketball.

With 12.4 seconds to settle on Wednesday evening, the firecracker of the Indiana Pacers, Aaron Nesmith, drained the second of the two free throws to reduce the advance of the Knicks, which had been 14 and a half earlier, at a point. It was then that New York forgot how to work.

Josh Hart took out the ball from the net and looked for a quick pass to his leader, as he often does afterwards. The constant energy of 30 years extends beyond the simple chase after loose bullets. Hart believes that it is necessary to push the pace, especially when he knows that a complete press is coming, as she did Indiana during the previous 47 minutes, 48 ​​seconds of the match 1. Undoubtedly, the strategy would continue in such a finish with so little time to go there, when the Pacers would need a flight or a fault.

Brunson finished the basic line with two defenders Draper. However, the rest of the team did not follow.

Mitchell Robinson, not known for his ball skills, sprinted in the other direction, as he should have. Karl-Anthony Towns jogged the low block with his back at Hart, then turned too late. As long as the Knicks did not give the ball, the Pacers were required to defeat someone, and the cities, which were not even the center of this range, is a deadly free throw -up. But he was not ready to receive a pass. Og Anunoby, who was beyond the 3-point arc during Nesmith’s free throws, was pinned in the same place by the stars of the stars of the Scrawny Tyrese Haliburton.

A night when everyone, including Hart and Brunson, contributed to collapse, at least these two understood this moment.

Hart signaled to any teammate to come back but no one was there. He turned a frantic pass to Brunson, who was lucky after the Pacers trapped him around. While Brunson derived from the limits, the double All-Star tried to shoot a bullet from Nesmith but missed and looked at a Baltimore chop in the hands of Anunoby, which the Pacers have clogged.

If you are a fan of Knicks or Pacers, it would take a brutal blow to the head to forget the rest. Anunoby only made one of the two free throws. Haliburton followed with a Fadeway from toe who propelled to the back of the rim and in the sky before the basketball gods kiss in the hoop, endearing the game to the buzzer, and the Pacers won in overtime, 138-135.

The Knicks committed five reversals in the last five and a half minutes of the match. Brunson threw a reckless dish in Anunoby in the last 30 seconds of regulation. He abandoned the balloon a few times more in overtime. The offensive bogged down once Indiana began to trap him aggressively in the section.

Mikal Bridges has disappeared. The speed and talent of the Pacers overwhelmed the Knicks, who acted as if an advance in the 1-0 series was a guarantee.

Nesmith scored 17 points, including five brands of 3 points, in the last 194 seconds of regulation. The cities lingered too far by keeping screens, giving the Pacers’ elite shooter too much space. Anunoby committed the same sin. Hart lost Nesmith on another rider. On another, the cities stopped before they even contacted a choice, not moving their feet and exceeding a free hand barely above its hip while being far from Nesmith. He could also have turned his palm to the sky as well and announce, as if he were the butler of Nesmith, “Here are your three points, sir.”

A match after the greatest performance of their season, a decimation of 38 points from the Boston Celtics to go to their first conference final in 25 years, the Knicks took a head and then stopped playing with all kinds of intensity.

But it was not new. In fact, it is their identity. Whether in victory or defeat, the knicks too often require a kick behind – even during the regular season, when they fought against the elite competition.

They repeated the same plea throughout the playoffs.

“We have to play 48 minutes,” they say.

Head coach Tom Thibodeau drops the line after most matches. Brunson too. Towns said, just like Hart.

Often, the trend occurs, the opposite of the way it did Wednesday. The Knicks, as they did three times against the Celtics, will fall into deep holes, will recognize that they must increase the intensity and then scratch. Their execution of playoffs was a series of living thanks to the alarm clocks, then to answer the waking up calls, then to hit rehearsal pimples, then to repeat the same process.

After a few improbable returns to Boston to start the semi-finals of the Eastern Conference, they stopped communicating on the defense in match 3, running their bad-roll blankets and absorbing a 22-point fist.

They destroyed the Celtics in the second half of the next match, the same match that ended in the Achilles injury of the All-Nba striker Jayson Tatum. With a chance to crush the series two days later, they presented themselves complacent in Boston and lost by 25 years. Various people with the Knicks said when he was leading to that night, they hadn’t had the good idea of ​​what was going to happen. The day after the defeat, the players gathered at the training center for an emergency meeting.

The Knicks did not meet the moment, did not communicate again, did not play with enough emergency and did not get ready enough for match 5. And they shared so much that day.

They corrected their problems in Boston’s match 6 and were competitive for most of the match 1 against Indiana … until they were not.

Perhaps Wednesday’s range of misadventures will sound another alarm. The cycle that has been shot since the start of the season could continue.

Friday, the Knicks could return to Madison Square Garden with a renewed dedication to details. Brunson could manage crunch time as the clutch player of the year, not as a renewal. Defensive communication could increase again. The urgency could resume. The players could hit their free throws, which Anunoby and the cities did not do in the section. They could remember the simple missions, like returning to the rear area for an Inbound play play that could derail their season if it had turned bad.

Of course, even if the Knicks become the 1996 Chicago Bulls for one night, the trend could reset – because sometimes the Knicks look like champions, and sometimes they forget what the champions look like.

(Photo of Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)