To label the Garden environment that awaits the Pacers Thursday night as “hostile” might be the mother of all understatements. The Knicks will be fighting for their playoff lives, aiming to avoid extinction. Suffice to say the crowd won’t shower the Pacers with bouquets.
Spit and cusses, maybe. Bouquets never.
The Pacers, up 3-1 and needing one victory to eliminate the Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, can draw upon their history. The Pacers are 5-0 in series all time in which they held a 3-1 lead (conversely, the Knicks are 0-12 in series when trailing 1-3).
But the Pacers also can look to the not-so-distant past. Despite having a losing road record in the regular season, the Pacers closed out the Hawks on the road in Atlanta in the first round. They hope to draw on that. What did they learn?
“A lot, hopefully,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said Wednesday, the day after Indiana slapped the Knicks, 93-82 in Game 4. “We gained a lot of confidence to win on the road in general in the playoffs. To win a closeout game on the road is a very difficult thing to do. This is going to be the most difficult game of the series, but hopefully we can come through.”
The Pacers have frustrated the Knicks with their every-man-does-it defense and their intelligent ball movement on offense. They have proven to be bigger, stronger, more athletic. They have mauled the Knicks in rebounding, 46.5-35.8. But the Pacers know it’s first to four. Three is nice. But it’s not four.
“All you have to do is look at their offensive production this year to see how explosive they are,” Vogel said of the Knicks. “They’re never out of a game. They’re never out of a series. We know how tenacious they are defensively. We have a great deal of respect for what they bring to the table.”
The feeling must be mutual by now. The Knicks know how good the Pacers are. The Pacers know it, too.
“It will [help],” Paul George said of the Atlanta closeout win. “It’s going to be 10 times harder, it being in New York. We know how well they play at home.”
The Pacers need only remember Game 2 in the Garden when the Knicks walloped them with a game-turning 30-2 run.
“We haven’t won anything. We have to be perfect. They play extremely well at home so we’re going to have our hands fill. They are an explosive team when they’re at home,” said Pacers center Roy Hibbert, whose interior defense has made a huge impact on the series.
So for the Pacers, win and advance. For the Knicks, win to survive.
“We’re not really looking at what’s next or the conference finals or anything like that. We know New York is such an explosive team, such a tenacious team that we’re not in any shape or form comfortable with what we’re doing,” Vogel said. “We know we need an extraordinary effort.”