In the second round of G5, the Knicks defeated the Pacers 121-91 at home, rewriting the score to 3-2.
It is also interesting to say that before G4, the Knicks, who were playing away, were beaten to the ground by the Pacers at the beginning, losing 20 points in the first quarter and 32 points in the whole game, and the difference in points reached 43 points at one point.
After that game, presumably the opinion of many people (yes, including me) is that the Knicks, who lack major generals, are at the end of their ropes, and with Anunoby they are only narrowly defeated, without Anunoby, as long as they strangle Brunson like G4, they will most likely kneel in this series.
I didn't expect it, I didn't expect it, the key Tianwang Mountain, the Knicks immediately returned the Pacers with a 30-point victory - before the game, you want to say that the Knicks can win, but a 30-point victory? How many New York fans would dare to think so?
Of course, with the same 30+ point difference, the script is still a little different, the G4 Knicks are powerless to lose, and the G5 Pacers only trailed by 12 points until the beginning of the fourth quarter, and they were really beaten in the last quarter.
There are three biggest problems for the Pacers:
One is rebounding, the team has only 5 offensive rebounds, and the Knicks have 20;
The second is turnovers, the whole team made 18 turnovers, the Knicks only had 9 times, more turnovers and fewer rebounds, so you will see that the Pacers only had 72 shots in this game, but the Knicks had 101 shots, and it was not surprising that they had nearly 30 fewer shots than their opponents, and they scored 30 points less;
The third is that the offensive continuity is too bad, the Pacers have two serious power outages in this game, one in the third quarter, and one in the fourth quarter, one in the fourth quarter, 9 minutes and 45 seconds left, Siakam forced Hart to score a layup, which was the 86th point of the Pacers team, but at the end of the game, they only scored 91 points in total.
The Pacers are a team that is originally historically weak in offense and defense, and it will be very difficult for them to win the game if they can't play their own style on offense.
Speaking of the Knicks, Jalen Brunson, once again took over the game.
After the whole game, Brunson played a total of 43 minutes, shooting 18-of-35, 2-of-6 three-pointers, and 6-of-7 free throws, scoring 44 points, 4 rebounds and 7 assists, and his plus/minus on the court was a terrifying +31.
In the first half, Brunson scored 28 points on 12-of-18 shooting, setting a new record for Knicks scoring in a playoff half (since statistics were available in the 96-97 season), and also helped the Knicks take a 15-point halftime lead.
This is Brunson's fifth 40+ game in this year's playoffs, after scoring 40+ in four consecutive games from the first round of G4 to the second round of G1, scoring 47 points, 40 points, 41 points, and 43 points.
Five 40+ times in a single playoff game tied O'Neal ('99-00) and Olajuwon ('94-95), which can be ranked third in the past 25 years, behind Iverson's six ('00-01') and James' eight ('17-'18).
It is worth mentioning that the Knicks' playoffs are not over yet, and if the Knicks finally advance to the Eastern Conference finals, Brunson still hopes to break the history of 40+ times in a single playoff game, and the current record is held by James (17-18 season) and Jerry West (64-65 season) 8 times.
So far in the playoffs, Brunson's performance: 33.9 points, 3.8 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game, first in scoring, sixth in assists, 45.1%/30.1%/78.3% from three, and 54.3% from the field.
The efficiency may not be pretty, but the Knicks hurt Randle, Bojan, and Anunoby, and Brunson is the only reliable ball-handler on the team.
Under the premise of being guarded by opponents like this, he can still average 27 shots per game and score nearly 34 points in a moderate effect - but anyone who has seen Brunson play, no one should think that he is brushing.
It is no exaggeration to say that Brunson is the first person in the East so far in this year's playoffs, and he can compete with Jokic for the position of the first person in the league.
Speaking after the game, Thibodeau said of Brunson: "You've had a lot of praise for Jalen Brunson, but the reality is that all the praise from the outside isn't enough to describe what he means to our team. ”
For Thibodeau, the general opinion now is that he will only die as the main force, which is true, but this time, Thibodeau still came up with something.
In this game, Thibodeau used McBride to start in place of Achiuwa, one big and four small with the Pacers to fight the offense, and continued to reuse G4 to play an excellent Burks, the two also lived up to Thibodeau's high expectations, McBride scored 17 points, Burks scored 18 points, making up for DiVincenzo's inaccuracy (6 of 14, 0 of 6 three-pointers, only 8 points) firepower.
What is a little puzzling and admirable is that such a large and small lineup actually grabbed 20 frontcourt rebounds, a full 15 more than the entire Pacers team - how hard this Knicks are, you can imagine.
As for this round of the series, now it looks like the Knicks have taken the initiative again, but they still can't be happy too early, after all, their lineup can still be adjusted is still limited, and the next game will return to the Pacers' home court, the Knicks have not won here so far, and look forward to how Haliburton and Siakam will respond to the life-and-death battle.