INDIANAPOLIS — In the end, they had no more comebacks left in them, and barely enough to fight back. Depending on how the next few years shake out for the Knicks, they may rue the opportunity they let slip away in these Eastern Conference finals.
The Game 1 collapse, which would’ve been a footnote if they could’ve found a way to win the series, instead gets a permanent place on the shelf of Knicks playoff ignominy, right alongside the Charles Smith Game, alongside eight-points-in-nine-seconds, alongside the Finger Roll Game, alongside 2-for-18.
And this series? Add it to the Rockets in ’94, and the Spurs in ’99, and the Pacers in 2000. The season ended with a 125-108 loss, ended in a hail of lacking defense and awful turnovers and, maybe, the most disappointing game Jalen Brunson has played as a Knick. A season ends, a dream dies, a ride stumbles off the tracks, and it’s easy in the moment to be mad at everybody.
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.
