New York (AFP) – Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns combined for 56 points as the New York Knicks kept their NBA playoff campaign alive with a 111-94 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Thursday. Trailing 3-1 in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals, the Knicks roared back to life in front of a star-studded Madison Square Garden crowd with a wire-to-wire win that sets up a game six in Indianapolis on Saturday.
Knicks talisman Brunson was once again the standout performer for New York, finishing with 32 points including four three-pointers. Towns, whose presence in the New York line-up was only confirmed shortly before tip-off following a left knee injury in game four, was also a pivotal figure with 24 points and 13 rebounds. “We were just able to get stops early and we would convert. We just found a way,” Brunson told TNT television. “I just felt like we played better. We played to our standards. Give them credit for the way they played, but we played Knicks basketball tonight.”
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Towns said there was never any chance of him not lining up. “It was do or die — nothing was going to stop me from playing this game,” Towns said. Brunson set the tone from the get-go, rattling in 14 points as the Knicks sprinted into an early 23-13 lead in the first quarter. Although Indiana came back to cut the lead to 27-23 at the end of the first, the Knicks continued to control possession, unsettling Indiana with the speed of their fast break offense and neutralising Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton.
New York led 56-45 at half time with Haliburton scoring just four points in the first half. Haliburton would go on to finish with a series-low eight points, shooting just two-of-seven from the field. The Pacers had staged an epic comeback to take the opening game of the series in New York last week, overturning a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit to stun the Knicks. There was a hint that another fightback might be in the offing when Indiana slashed a 20-point New York lead to just 10 points in the third quarter. But the Knicks regrouped and stretched their lead once more before closing out the win to keep the series alive.
Pacers coach Rick Carlisle blamed his team’s failure to threaten the Knicks — it was the first time in the series Indiana had been restricted to less than 100 points — on their sluggish start. “We didn’t play with the level of force that we needed to,” Carlisle said. “We lost the rebound battle, we lost the turnover battle and we didn’t shoot well. They had a lot to do with that, so give them credit, but we’re going to have to play much better. To start the game we didn’t have the right level of attitude necessary in this environment. It was a bad start. We never had a lead in the game. There were a multitude of things that were going wrong. There were little stretches where we got traction, but it was never enough.”
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