The Indiana Pacers are halfway to a chance to play for an elusive NBA title as they head home in their Eastern Conference finals, but they might prefer to stay right where they are.
Pascal Siakam scored a playoff career-high 39 points on Friday night, as the Pacers beat the New York Knicks 114-109.
The result means the Pacers lead 2-0 in the playoffs after the first two games of the series at the Knicks’ Madison Square Garden home arena.
Game 3 is on Sunday night in Indiana, which will be rocking all day long with the Indianapolis 500 being run that afternoon. The Pacers can only hope to be as good there as they have been on the road, where they have won six straight games since falling at Milwaukee in Game 3 of the first round.
“We have a long way to go, and it’s only going to get tougher for us,” Siakam said.
Myles Turner added 16 points and Tyrese Haliburton had 14 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds for the Pacers, who lost to the Lakers in 2000 in their only NBA Finals appearance.
Siakam finished 15 for 23 from the field on a night nobody else on the high-scoring Pacers had more than five baskets.
“Special game,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “In the first half, he was the guy that got us going and got us through some difficult stretches.”
Jalen Brunson had 36 points and 11 assists for the Knicks, who need a quick turnaround or their first appearance in the conference finals in 25 years will be a brief one. They defended much better after their crushing collapse in a 138-135 overtime loss in Game 1, but could not find enough scoring to come back after a bad start to the fourth quarter.
Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns each had 20 points and seven rebounds for the Knicks, but Towns played just 28 minutes as coach Tom Thibodeau went longer with backup Mitchell Robinson, a much better defender who grabbed nine rebounds.
No team has lost the first two games at home and come back to win a series in the conference finals.
“Going into the fourth quarter, it’s a tie ballgame. We’ve just got to make better plays, more winning plays,” Thibodeau said.
It was tied at 81 after three, before the Pacers opened the fourth with a 13-4 run to move ahead 94-85 on Siakam’s 3-pointer with 9:17 remaining. They would quickly push the margin back to around there every time the Knicks got any momentum, and it was 110-100 after another basket by Siakam with 2:45 to play.
The Knicks scored nine straight to make it 110-109 on Josh Hart’s basket with 14 seconds to go. Aaron Nesmith made two free throws for the Pacers, Brunson was well off on a 3-point attempt, and Turner finished it out with two free throws.
The 50th playoff meeting between the rivals — the Pacers lead 28-22, all since 1993 — more closely resembled their defensive battles of the 1990s than the shootout of two nights earlier.
Indiana raced to a 19-9 lead, but the Knicks quickly caught them when Robinson and Deuce McBride entered, and the game remained within a single-digit margin for nearly the entire rest of the night.
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