So unless you were hiding under a proverbial rock from the sports world you probably heard about the epic game one matchup in the Eastern Conference Finals between the Pacers and Knicks. It had peaks and valleys and a particularly epic shot that made me have deja vu to the Madison Square Garden days with John Starks and Patrick Ewing. But I wanted to break down specifically the last six minutes and 12 seconds of this game to show how haywire things got. 

  • 1:12 left in the 4th quarter: Josh Hart brings it up and then gives it to the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year, Jalen Brunson, and he dissects the Pacers’ zone defense and converts a reverse handed layup over Pascal Siakam. The Knicks are now up 9 points with 58.8 left.
  • 58.8 seconds left in the 4th quarter: Pascal Siakam takes the ball up the court and then hands it off to Andrew Nembhart and sets a pick. Nembhart shoots a fade away three and somehow it goes in! The crowd’s noise simmers. Then, Karl-Anthony Towns goes up the court on the next possession and lays up the ball with his left hand. The crowd goes crazy and the comfort of an imminent Knicks win seems within reach.
  • 40 seconds left in the 4th Quarter: Pascal Siakam brings up the ball again and hands it to Nembhart, who shoots another three while on the edges of the Knicks logo…and he makes it again! Kevin Harlan, TNT’s announcer, gave one of the calls of the night: “He’s a flamethrowers!”
  • 34 seconds left in the 4th Quarter: Josh Hart takes a timeout and Tom Thibodeou, the Knicks’ head coach, is visibly disgusted and pacing the sidelines like some Sith overlord. They get out of the timeout and inbound it, hand it to Jalen Brunson who gives it to OG Annonoby in the post who goes up with it and proceeds to get fouled by Pascal Siakam. The kicker…the Pacers ask their coach to challenge the call, which he does, and surprise, surprise the refs say that Siakam legally made contact with the ball which allows the Pacers to get possession of the ball. Good call by the refs because it was great defense from Siakam.
  • 29.9 seconds left in the 4th Quarter: The Pacers have Tyrese Haliburton take the ball up the court and, like a broken record, pass the ball to Aaron Nesmith, who again hits another off-balance three while making Josh Hart slip on the court. The Knicks call a timeout to advance the ball and recover from the shock of their nine-point lead being evaporated to two points with 22.1seconds. 
  • 22.1 seconds left in the 4th quarter: Brunson inbounds the ball to Josh Hart with a high-arching pass and it nearly goes out of bounds or goes into the hands of the Pacers defenders, but Josh Hart is able to stop this, then passes to Brunson who passes to KAT who proceeds to get fouled.
  • 14.3 seconds left  in the 4th Quarter: At this moment, I could just tell from the vibes and the serendipitous way of basketball that KAT was going to miss the last free throw. He looked scared and of course he does. Pacers call a timeout.  
  • 13.9 seconds left in the 4th Quarter: The ball is passed to Nembhard (once again), and OG Annouby fouls him before he takes the shot. Nembhard goes to the line and hits both free throws. At this point he has scored 29 points in the fourth quarter. As the Knicks inbound they nearly turn the ball over again but then the ball is passed to OG Announby who is fouled. Annouby is at the line and the crowd is chanting his name, but you can see the fear in his eyes and, of course, he misses the first free throw and hits the second one.
  • 7.3 seconds left in the 4th quarter: The Pacers inbound the ball to Tyrese Haliburton who rushes down the court and gets into the paint but is covered by Knicks center Mitchell Robinson and then, in a very gutsy call decides, to go back to the three point line and take the shot from there instead of getting an easier two which would have tied the game. He takes the shot and it’s the stereotypical sports movie slow motion feeling of seeing the ball leaving his hands and then bouncing up high in the air from the back of the rim. Half of the crowd looks like they are breathing a sigh of relief and cheering. Then you see that cheering audibly turn into groans as the ball bounces right into the net. The crowd looks absolutely stunned as the Pacers celebrate, thinking it was a three-point shot.  Haliburton, in a moment of nostalgia and vengeance, points at Reggie Miller who is announcing the game and does the same now famous choking gesture he did to the Knicks when he hit a game-winning shot in the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals. While the call was initially called a three, Halliburton’s foot was on the line, and it was ruled a two.
  • 3:50 left in overtime: The crowd is on pins and needles. The ball is passed to KAT and he ends up making a two-point shot to take the score to 125-127.
  • 3:14 left in overtime: The Knicks get possession again then Josh Hart does a smooth bounce pass to Anunoby for an easy two. Then the Pacers get the ball and Myles Turner turns it over which leads to a Knicks fast break while Turner makes up for the turnover and blocks Jalen Brunson’s layup.
  • 1:31 left in overtime: The Pacers are down by one, and Haliburton takes an amazing shot into the paint with a lot of contact and makes it screaming “And 1”!
  • 1:07 left in overtime: Haliburton takes a three that bounces off the rim into Obi Toppin’s hand who slams it down for the tip jam. Then the Knicks come down and Jalen Brunson slides through and avoids an amazing block attempt from Toppin and makes it. Then the Pacers come right back down the court with Haliburton using his magical court vision to pass to Nembhard.  
  • 26.7 seconds left in overtime: The Knicks call a timeout and run their offense. Jalen Brunson is involved in a play with Nembhard where the ball narrowly goes off the tips of Jalen Brunsons fingers after tapping Neimhard’s. The Pacers are furiously asking for a challenge of the play while Brunson is desperately trying to inbound the ball while Timothée Chalamet is yelling at the ref right behind Brunson. They review the play and it went off Brunson’s fingertips, making it Pacers ball. It is now sinking in with the crowd that they might actually lose this game, which they had dominated most of regulation.
  • 20 seconds left in overtime: Nembhard does a pick and roll with Obi Toppin who does a double-clutch jam reminiscent of Dr. J through debatable contact from Mikal Bridges, giving the Pacers a three-point lead. 
  • 15.3 seconds left in overtime: The Knicks have one last chance where Brunson takes a long three which airballs. It’s rebounded and then kicked back out to KAT who barely misses. Then Pacers get the rebound with 0.2 seconds left, essentially ending the hopes of the Knicks extending this game.  

Between the historical rivalry of the Pacers and Knicks, Brunson’s 43-point game and Tyrese Haliburton doing his best Reggie Miller impression and bringing generational trauma to a new era of Knicks fans, this was some of the most exciting basketball I saw this NBA Playoffs.