Turnablowout is fair play
Knicks win big after losing big, get history on their side going to Indiana for Game 6
The Knicks followed up the fifth-worst loss in their playoff history on Sunday with their fourth-biggest ever playoff win last night, reclaiming command of their Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Pacers in a 121-91 blowout.
Unlike the Pacers, who are now one defeat away from losing all three of the all-time series in which they had a win as big as their 32-point Game 4 triumph, the Knicks have been buoyed by their blowouts.
The largest margin of victory in Knicks playoff history remains 36, a 132-96 dismantling of the Bucks to end the 1970 Eastern Division finals in five games. The Knicks won the Finals in seven.
Three years later, the Knicks scored a 129-96 win over the Celtics in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals, on the way to taking a 3-1 lead in the series. The Knicks needed seven games to close out Boston, but they did, and went on to win another title.
Settling between the 36-point win in 1970 and the 33-pointer in 1973, the Knicks opened the 1992 playoffs by pounding the Pistons, 109-75. The Knicks won that series, 3-2, but lost the next round to Michael Jordan and the Bulls in seven. Here’s the intro to Game 5 of that Pistons series on NBC:
Patrick Ewing poured in 31 points with 19 rebounds to lift the Knicks past the Bad Boys, one of a franchise-record 18 times that Ewing scored at least 30 in a playoff game.
Jalen Brunson is now up to 10 times scoring 30-plus as a Knick in the playoffs, joining Carmelo Anthony and Bernard King in a tie behind Ewing and Willis Reed’s 12. Brunson also is at 33.9 points per game through 11 contests this postseason, an average of 33.9 that trails only King’s 34.8 per game in 1984 in Knicks history.
King played 12 games in the 1984 playoffs, so Brunson can tie that average through a dozen games if he scores 44 in Game 6 on Friday in Indiana. Even if Brunson doesn’t get 44 in his very next outing, that’s still the total he needs to match King for the third-most points in a single Knicks postseason, again behind Ewing (547 in 1994) and Reed (426 in 1970).
How much Brunson rewrites Knicks history at this point is just a matter of how far this team can get. Meanwhile, Josh Hart and Isaiah Hartenstein each had double-digit rebounds for the second time this series, repeating their Game 1 performance. The Knicks are 4-0 in this postseason when they have multiple players with double-figure boards — against Philadelphia it was Hart and Mitchell Robinson in Game 1, Hart and OG Anunoby in Game 4.
The Knicks won’t approach their team record in that department: they had five players with 10-plus boards against the Celtics in Game 3 of the 1969 Eastern Division finals, matching an NBA record set by the 1958 Philadelphia Warriors. Nobody has done it since, with the most recent team to have four double-figure rebounders in a playoff game being the 2015 Cavaliers (Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, Timofey Mozgov, Iman Shumpert) in their sweep closeout against the Celtics in 2015.
As for the Pacers, last night was their third-worst playoff loss, trailing a 31-point home drubbing by the Celtics in 2005, and a 32-point defeat in Miami in 2012. The latter was also Game 5 of a tied series, which the Heat went back to Indiana and won in six. The Pacers did manage to recover 19 years ago against Boston — an odd series where the road team won five out of seven games, and each of the last four.
The Knicks are now 5-1 at home in the playoffs, their most wins in a single spring at the Garden since they went 6-2 there in the 2000 playoffs. The 1994 Knicks have the team record with 11 home playoff wins (2 losses), while the title teams were 9-2 (1970) and 7-1 (1973) on their home floor. And for what it’s worth, the 1993 Knicks also went 7-1 at MSG in the playoffs… it’s just that the one loss was the Charles Smith game.
Meanwhile, in the Western Conference, this is the first time the Timberwolves have lost three straight games since the first three games of their series against the Nuggets last year. Minnesota hasn’t lost four straight since a six-game skid from Dec. 21-31, 2022. They snapped that streak on Jan. 2, 2023, by beating the Nuggets.