SIGN OF THE TIMES: Pacers fans have plenty of reason to cheer, writes the Post’s Mike Vaccaro — they’re the best team in this series. (N.Y. Post: Charles Wenzelberg)
INDIANAPOLIS — The most troubling part is how puzzled they all seem, bereft of answer and explanation. Three times now in four games — and, really, in three out of four quarters in the other one — the Knicks haven’t just been beaten by the Pacers, they’ve been bloodied, battered. Outclassed.
This time it was 93-82, and again it was a camouflaged score, an 11-point loss that looked and felt every bit a 25-point slaughter, and it nudged the Pacers to a 3-1 lead in these Eastern Conference semifinals. Afterward the Knicks would try to identify what went wrong, and it looked like someone other than Will Hunting trying to figure out the math problem on the wall.
“We get open looks,” J.R. Smith said, “and we can’t make any of them.”
“We play good defense,” Tyson Chandler said, “and we can’t clear the glass.”
“Defensively,” Mike Woodson said, “I thought we were right there.”
They can do all the soul searching they want, but the answer they’re looking for, the one based in truth, is one they’d probably rather not ponder: The Pacers are the bigger team. They’re the younger team. They’re the smarter team. They’re the more poised team. They’re the more relaxed team. They’re the hungrier team.
They’re the better team.
And based on what we’ve seen? It’s not close.
“There’s nothing new to us out there,” Indiana’s Paul George said. “That’s the way we played all year.”
Unfortunately for the Knicks, they can describe themselves the same way. All year long they lived large off 3-pointers, they controlled the ball, they usually played to a draw on the boards. They fed off a superstar, Carmelo Anthony, and their own fickle confidences; when they were good, they were very good.
When they were bad?
Well, all season long, when the Knicks were bad, when they stumbled and struggled through the middle 40 games of the schedule, they could look so woeful, so anemic, you wondered how they’d ever won the games they’d won, if they could ever win another. Mostly, that’s what we’ve seen not only in this series but the bulk of the playoffs.
“We haven’t played a good game since Game 3 of the Celtics series,” said Jason Kidd, who missed another couple of shots in posting his eighth straight scoreless game. That also happens to be the game in which Smith threw his infamous elbow at Jason Terry’s chin, but by this point there should be no significance to that unless you believe in the unlimited pull of karma.
The Knicks were able to survive that slump in the opening series because the Celtics were just old enough, just beaten up enough, to serve up that 26-point lead in Game 6 that proved just stout enough to avoid a full collapse. And even in Game 2 of this matchup, the Knicks essentially survived thanks to a 30-2 run that seems as out of place in this series as Mork from Ork would be on “Mad Men.”
“I’m very confident that we can do something special here,” Anthony said.
“I can’t lose hope,” Woodson said. “It takes four games to get out of this series. We go home, we handle our business at home, and we get back here and see if we can force a Game 7.”
It may be too late to worry about hope, even with a home game looming tomorrow night, one that, regardless of the final score, sure looks like it might mean farewell to the Garden for the basketball portion of its spring. The Knicks can talk wistfully about shooting better, and rebounding better, but the way the Pacers have owned them on both ends of the floor, it might be more useful (and likely) to ask for the ability to fly.
But that truly is all the Knicks have left. Suddenly they have to talk (and, more importantly, feel) the way the Celtics did in the last series when they spoke about trying to win a game at a time and not three at a time, when they tried (with some success) to get in the Knicks’ heads, talking about how all the pressure is on the team needing a win to close out, rather than just survive.
One thing about that, though:
It sure sounded a lot more believable when the Celtics were saying it.