INDIANAPOLIS — Jalen Brunson is not here for the pity party.
The New York Knicks looked unlike themselves Sunday when they transformed into another being, a mishmash of lethargy that doesn’t race to offensive rebounds, is late to loose balls and detaches from streakers in transition.
The Indiana Pacers annihilated them 121-89 in Game 4 of their second-round playoff series, which is now tied 2-2. For the first time during a playoff run that is taking years off their fans’ life expectancies and adding miles to their players’ odometers, a game was never close.
Indiana’s lead, which inflated to 43 at one point, was so clearly insurmountable that New York head coach Tom Thibodeau, a man who still clutches onto the trauma of each blown or regained lead he’s ever witnessed, removed his starters during the third quarter.
“We can talk about fresher legs, and we can give us all the pity that we want. Yeah, we’re short-handed, but that doesn’t matter right now,” Brunson said. “We have what we have and we need to go forward with that. So there is no, ‘We’re short-handed.’ There is no excuse. There’s no excuse, whatsoever. If we lose, we lose.”
On Sunday, they lost. And they did it uncharacteristically.
Even when the Knicks don’t play well, they tend to put up a fight. Until Game 4, they hadn’t lost by more than 11 points since March 5.
But the Knicks — who are missing four rotation players in OG Anunoby, Bojan Bogdanović, Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle — are holding themselves together with an ACE bandage these days. And Sunday, it showed for all four quarters.
The Pacers beat them to loose balls and topped them on the boards early. With each Knicks jumper that clobbered the hoop, Indiana skipped down the court and created layups or wide-open 3s. If the Pacers missed, they grabbed their rebounds. They motored to a 34-11 lead only 10 minutes into the game.
One team in this matchup was the NBA’s best on the glass during the regular season. The other finished near the bottom of the league. Those roles reversed Sunday when the Pacers outboarded the Knicks while blowing New York away on the break.
Indiana scored 1.87 points per transition play in this one, according to Cleaning the Glass. That is a better efficiency than Stephen Curry, the most accurate free-throw shooter of all time, going to the line for two shots. New York scored only 0.58 in transition.
“We have to take this L,” Brunson said. “There’s no excuse.”
A typically sprightly group appeared drained.
As injuries have piled up, so has the burden on the Knicks’ top players. Because of the blowout, Josh Hart rested for more minutes Sunday than he had during his first nine playoff games combined. Leading into Game 4, Donte DiVincenzo had gone for 43-plus minutes for four consecutive games.
But DiVincenzo scored only seven points and hit just one 3-pointer during the blowout. Hart, who tallied two points and three rebounds, put the Game 4 loss “on my shoulders” because he’s “someone who brings energy, brings hustle, the kinda things I didn’t do today.”
Discomfort is building and not just among the players out of the lineup.
Isaiah Hartenstein’s left shoulder pounded into the court on a second-quarter fall. He immediately grabbed it, wincing in pain and said after the game he believes the injury is “probably like a pinched nerve.” He added that the X-rays were negative. But Hartenstein continued to play and says he will be good to go for Game 5.
Brunson is dealing with a foot injury he suffered in Game 2. He insists he is “fine,” not injured anymore, even as he struggles to create separation from Pacers defenders, led by physical wing Aaron Nesmith. Brunson scored 18 points in Game 4 on 6-of-17 shooting, including an 0-of-5 showing from 3.
More concerning, he erred on all eight of his jump shots. Six of those misses fell short; the couple that he catapulted long were both two-pointers in the first quarter when his legs were fresher.
“It’s not an excuse at this point,” Hartenstein said. “I think everyone’s kind of going through something, I think you just have to find a way. That’s kind of what they probably did a lot better than us these last two games.”
The Knicks will limp back to New York for Game 5, but it’s not like the Pacers will wake up spry Monday morning. All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton struggled to walk down three steps after finishing his Game 3 news conference, leaning heavily on railings to both his right and left as he hobbled five feet to ground level.
He’s fighting through lower back spasms, a right ankle sprain and a sacral contusion, the Pacers said. But he finished Game 4 with 20 points, six rebounds and five assists in only 27 minutes.
Haliburton found a way to look like himself. The Knicks did not — and it was not only because of flattened energy. This team was not itself fundamentally, either.
No play from the afternoon better embodied the Knicks’ discombobulation than an eight-second violation they committed in the first quarter when they were already down 14 and began to let go of the rope. Seldom-used backup center Jericho Sims, who received the inbounds pass, tried to maneuver up the court himself, almost traveled, picked up his dribble and turned it over moments later. He will receive criticism for the play, but that moment was as much about who didn’t have the ball as it was about who did.
The Knicks had two point guards on the court at that time, Brunson and Miles “Deuce” McBride. Both were in the backcourt with Sims but were not open. Once Hart inbounded it to Sims, they should have known to hurry his way. Sims is not a ballhandler. He is not beating a press.
He stood in place, waiting for a guard to curl around him. No one approached. By the time he began to dribble, McBride had drifted out of the play, up near half court. Brunson was trotting upcourt, not peering back to his big man.
In the most exhausting moments, it’s not just the body that can go; focus can flutter, too.
“Do I feel it? Yeah. But I think everyone does,” Hart said. “So at the end of the day, it’s the playoffs. You’ve got to will yourself, will your body.”
The Knicks will spend the time before Game 5 searching for fixes.
Maybe they try to open up Brunson more off the ball, running him around screens and encouraging Hart or DiVincenzo to initiate the offense. Or maybe they play around with the starters. McBride began the second half of Game 4 in place of Precious Achiuwa, which spread out the offense more. The Brunson-McBride-DiVincenzo-Hart-Hartenstein lineup is tiny, but it also dominated during the regular season, outscoring opponents by 33 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass.
But the best adjustment the Knicks could make, the one that would trump any scheme or tweak, is to look more like themselves.
“We just have to get back to playing our basketball,” Hartenstein said. “I think that’s being the more physical team, doing the little things, diving on the ball, making those second efforts. I don’t think we’ve been doing that the last two games.”
(Photo of Donte DiVincenzo, Jalen Brunson and Mamadi Diakite: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)