INDIANAPOLIS — Time after time the ball would be in the air, it would clank hard off the rim, the 18,185 people inside Bankers Life Fieldhouse would groan. And time after time the ball would land in a friendly set of hands, and the same 18,185 people would exhale, and applaud.
And, invariably, seconds later, all 18,185 would explode.
The Knicks can’t win this way, certainly can’t win three games this way, not against the Pacers, not against their size, against wave after wave of Indiana players crashing backboards, getting second, third, fourth shots, 18 offensive rebounds in all, 20 second-chance points.
“A lot of times, we’d work hard for 20, 22 seconds on defense, play good defense,” Tyson Chandler said, “and then they’re the ones getting their hands on the rebound.”
Chandler shook his head.
“And that,” he said, “just can’t happen.”
Indiana won the game, 82-71, seized a 2-1 lead in these best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals, and there is no mystery to how that happened. The Pacers shot a sickly 35 percent from the floor — missing 52 shots in all, a remarkable number.
And it didn’t matter. The Knicks pride themselves on protecting the ball, yet they committed 14 turnovers, many unforced. The Knicks are a team that takes advantage of the 3-pointer better than anyone in the sport yet made only three and attempted just 11. Raymond Felton played his worst game of the playoffs. J.R. Smith showed up with a virus. Pablo Prigioni and Jason Kidd combined for zero points in 45 minutes and 52 seconds of combined action, and for Kidd that’s now seven games in a row where he hasn’t scratched.
And still the Knicks could have survived this, could have taken homecourt back from the Pacers, could have stolen one and sprinted back to the hotel with it, if they had done one simple thing:
Rebound the basketball.
Only, most of the night, the Knicks acted as if the ball were made of kryptonite.
Or arsenic.
Or acid.
“Tonight,” Knicks coach Mike Woodson said, “we just looked slow.”
Woodson seemed most concerned about the Knicks’ sluggish offense, and that was certainly problematic, because they also shot only 35 percent from the floor. But often the key to winning in the playoffs is taking care of little things when your biggest weapons aren’t working.
Fact: Roy Hibbert destroyed the Knicks, clobbered Chandler, buried him with 24 points and 12 rebounds — eight of them offensive, a ghastly number unless you’re Wilt Chamberlain and the calendar reads 1962.
Fact: David West, who struggled badly in Game 2, had 11 points and 12 rebounds — five of his offensive — and brought decidedly more energy to the low box than anyone who did so for the Knicks.
Fact: In a sequence that defined the way the night went for the Knicks, Tyler Hansbrough beat Chandler to the ball on a wayward rebound and managed to get a favorable whistle when the ball went out of bounds off his foot — a bad call but a just result, since effort should always be rewarded over lethargy.
“We were a step behind all night,” Chandler said.
This time, whatever flunking grades the Knicks wanted to give themselves were well earned. After Game 1, that was the narrative the Knicks chose from the coach down, on a night when effort didn’t seem to be as much a problem as execution.
This? This was all effort, or lack of it, and while everyone is banged up right now — Chandler’s neck, Carmelo Anthony’s shoulder, Felton’s ankle, Amar’e Stoudemire’s knee — it still doesn’t explain how the Knicks were too often caught staring at Pacers grabbing loose balls and squeezing 50-50 rebounds. And with so much riding on this series, it’s not only inexcusable, it’s inexplicable.
“We’ve got to make them pay for crashing the boards every time,” Chandler said, urging the Knicks to get the ball on the break more, ramp up the pace, discourage the Pacers from sending all five men after the ball, and it sounds very nice. Until you saw Hibbert beat Chandler for another rebound. Look, the Knicks don’t ask Chandler to score. They barely ask him to play any offense at all.
They need him to rebound. If he does it, maybe they all do it. And if they all do it, maybe winning Game 4 won’t look quite so daunting as it does this morning.