The Paul George Finals, And A Word On The Knicks
I mean, look: if the Indiana Pacers didn’t win this series after how they won Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, they would be the ones asking themselves about the future. They may still be, what with a matchup against the season-long best squad Oklahoma City Thunder.
With Tyrese Haliburton (mostly) leading from the front – the chip on his shoulder almost verbally evident – and Pascal Siakam being the egg keeping everything together, Indiana didn’t roll through the 1-seed Cleveland Cavaliers with such ease only to sell out to the New York Knicks.
With a resounding 125-108 home win in Game 6, Indiana took care of business, ending both the series and, via collateral media damage, the NBA on TNT relationship. They face the 68-win Thunder in Game 1 tonight, with the series beginning in OKC.
First, though, the Knicks, my beloved and disjointed bunch, one that just completed the franchise’s best season in 25 years. After taking two gigantic swings last summer in obtaining both Mikal Bridges and then Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks lined themselves up to play against the Boston Celtics – remember when they were the forever-team to beat, a mere month ago? – only for the Celtics to combust.
Despite having bounced the 1-seed Cleveland Cavaliers in convincing, five-game fashion, the Knicks entered the Easter Conference Finals as favorites, having beaten the Pacers twice in their three regular season matchups. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, to paraphrase Tyson, and Game 1 was the Pacers absolutely clocking the Knicks[1].
If losing Game 1 was the bell ringing, losing Game 2 was the gut-punch, home court advantage now completely dissipated unless the series went seven. The wins, while nice, delayed the inevitable. Aside from a no-show performance in a Game 5 loss, Haliburton was excellent, directing traffic and keeping the go-go Pacers running. Whereas last year the Knicks ran out of guys, this year the Pacers simply ran the Knicks out of the gym.
Only a few days later, following reports of some internal turmoil with the good time Garden gang, New York fired head coach Tom Thibodeau. Sure, I see it: the starters’ minutes have been a Thibs problem since long before Mikal Bridges aired that out in public; the Knicks may have lost Game 1 specifically because Thibs re-inserted the starters, even as Landry Shamet and Deuce McBride were extending the Knicks’ lead; New York’s iso-heavy offense could stagnate at times throughout the season and especially in the slower playoffs; and Thibs couldn’t escape the at least partially-correct notion that he misused Bridges, for whom the Knicks traded five first round picks last summer.
On the other hand, though, I can’t see where the Knicks turn aside from someone like Mike Malone, who is essentially Thibs Jr. but with a ring. Maybe that’s enough, but it doesn’t make the Brunson-Towns pairing on defense any more palatable. As Tom Ziller points out, a championship is the only thing that makes “a championship coach,” and Malone does have one as a head coach.
It was going to be a summer of heavy reflection for New York regardless, and now that Thibs’ firing is out of the way, the search for a new coach and, at least partially, a new identity awaits. With Tatum’s injury, the Bucks in flux and a whole host of dysfunction elsewhere, nevermind the slightly-unheralded Pacers themselves, the East remains open for the foreseeable future. Who will the Knicks become?
Ratings[2] and convenient flight routes be damned, it’s the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals. Though it feels like Indy has turned the playoffs into their own track meet, they’re only third in pace for the playoffs – behind the Thunder, of all teams, as well as the long-gone Memphis Grizzlies.
With MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander running the show, the Thunder had the second-highest net rating of all-time this season, behind only the 1995-’96 Chicago Bulls. During the rare times he is in any trouble at all, SGA can pass to any of Chet Holmgren, Jaylen Williams, Lu Dort or Isaiah Hartenstein, among others.
Funnily enough, as Zach Lowe and others have repeatedly pointed out, the origins of this series begin with these very teams trading with each other, the same (currently ringless himself) superstar having built two different Finals teams before ever reaching a Finals himself.
For Indiana:
-When Paul George requested a trade away from Indiana with one year left on his contract in 2017, instead of sending him to Los Angeles, the Pacers shipped him to Oklahoma City in exchange for Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis.
-In 2022, Indy traded Sabonis for Buddy Hield, Tristan Thompson and, sure enough, Tyrese Haliburton.
For OKC:
-When Paul George requested a trade away from OKC, the partnership with Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and him having yielded minimal playoff success and with a rebuild imminent, the Thunder traded him to the Los Angeles Clippers for Danilo Gallinari, five first round draft picks, two other pick swaps, and a promising point guard fresh off an All-Rookie Second Team campaign, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Trading Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso was, appropriately, a steal that has shored up OKC’s defense. The team is long, physical and imminently switchable. They have no apparent leaks going even nine or ten players deep.
The one thing Indiana has going for it – just ask Aaron Nesmith – is its playoff-leading three-point percentage, with the team shooting over 40% as a whole. Oklahoma City, which was the sixth-best three-point shooting team in the league this season, has dropped from 37.4% on 38.8 attempts per game to 33.6% on 37.4 attempts. While that may seem an opening, it hasn’t materially mattered for the Thunder, who’ve won 12 of 16 playoff games so far by an average margin of 11 points.
As we keep hearing from everybody in media who last enjoyed sports when Zwan was a band, three-point attempts being up leaguewide mean that no lead is truly safe, and teams can and often do win games on shot-making and streaks of heat or luck, depending on your predilection.
No team in these playoffs knows that better than the Pacers, who have a highlight reel’s worth of improbable comebacks and game-winning shots this postseason. They weren’t the most heralded team in the East by any stretch, but they keep finding ways to win. In their wake, the Milwaukee Bucks, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks lie, all still reeling.
Even so, the Thunder are just too much. Everyone in that rotation is, at the very least, a competent two-way player, each with their own tendencies and specialties. Sam Presti has built a menacing squad that – health withstanding, always – is the finally-arrived juggernaut NBA fans have been awaiting since trading for Paul George and setting all of this in motion.
Where there’s life, there’s hope, and the Pacers have a ton of life in them. The problem is that Oklahoma City is double-digits deep on the bench with guys whose personal search-and-destroy missions happen to be perfectly complementary to those of everyone around them. Rick Carlisle is a genius who has been here before, while this is Mark Daigneault’s first rodeo. Be that as it may: thirteen years after their underdog run became the Heatles’ capstone project, and with a completely different cast, this is the Thunder’s title to lose.
[1] The only reprieve for Knicks fans from that game was that when the Pacers finally won in overtime, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as when Haliburton seemed to have hit a three at the end of regulation. At that point, the game was lost already. It turned out his foot was on the line, but I have to think that most Knicks fans felt the same thing a few minutes later, that it had already felt like a loss regardless of what was going to happen given the circumstances around Indiana’s comeback.
[2] Unless the NBA or any other sports league employs you, you should not care about ratings. They’re incorrect and unrepresentative of the people actually watching games. Stop pocket-watching.
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