The camera lingered on Celebrity Row at Madison Square Garden — Timothée Chalamet slack-jawed, Martha Stewart blinking in disbelief, Jimmy Fallon rubbing his temples after his “Tonight Show” the previous night had portrayed Indiana as a state of nobodies. It was Game 1 of the Knicks-Pacers N.B.A. Eastern Conference finals. The Pacers had erased a five-point deficit in the final half-minute, Tyrese Haliburton tied the game with a shot from somewhere near Hoboken and overtime sealed a 138-135 Indiana win.
For Hoosiers, the joy was double-distilled: We stole a playoff game and, for one delicious moment, annulled the celebrity cachet of New York. Across Indiana living rooms, cheers erupted. Vindication felt deep, as if Haliburton’s improbable shot proved something fundamental about their home.
In Game 2 on Friday night, the Pacers struck again. The teams play for a third time in Indianapolis Sunday night and the Knicks travel confidently, armed with a 5-1 road record this postseason. One stolen game could rewrite the story: Edge, spite and possibility all share the same charter flight.
This giddy clash — Hicks versus Knicks, cornfields versus concrete — revives a rivalry that shaped the N.B.A.’s most combustible decade. Between 1993 and 2000 the two teams met six times in the postseason, each series a low-scoring trench war where elbows flew and apologies never arrived.
“We just beat the hell out of each other,” the former Pacer Sam Mitchell was quoted recently as saying. Reggie Miller’s eight points in nine seconds in ’95, the choke sign directed at Spike Lee, Patrick Ewing’s thunderous scowls and Larry Johnson’s four-point play in ’99 still live in grainy VHS glory. No championships emerged from that theater, yet the games became folklore because they dramatized two competing claims on the soul of basketball: Indiana’s small-town romance — think Hoosiers and Larry Bird — versus New York’s big-city swagger.
The rivalry is back. Both clubs now rank among the league’s top 10 offenses, flicking up threes instead of throwing forearms. Haliburton dribbles like a jazz solo; Jalen Brunson answers with piston-quick layups. The bruises are fewer, the pace faster, yet the cultural tension endures — and that is to be celebrated.
Regional differences used to be the texture of American life. You tasted them in barbecue, heard them in accents, argued them on bar stools without unfriending anyone. Something was lost as those edges blurred — local traditions, intimate rituals, the small pride of belonging somewhere distinct.
The digital age flattens those distinctions, shipping the same memes to every phone before breakfast. Sports, mercifully, still permit honest provincial pride: New York chants “De-fense,” Indiana yells “Two-ahh!” and nobody writes a think-piece about microaggressions.
That’s why the “Tonight Show” video skit about Indiana’s “celebrities” (a local TV meteorologist, the Pence family, an Indy 500 tire, a county treasurer) stung and thrilled at once. For coastal elites, Indiana is flyover land, part of the blur between JFK and LAX. For us Hoosiers, it’s the state of Bob Knight’s discipline and Larry Bird’s grit. We grow corn, yes, but we also grow jump shots — the patient, rhythmic, team-first kind.
The Knicks-Pacers rematch supplies a civic service. It offers Americans a place to deposit antagonism that has become toxic elsewhere. If you must loathe, loathe the opponent’s pick-and-roll coverage, not his vote. Spike Lee can jaw at Reggie Miller on TNT’s broadcast and nobody subpoenas anyone. The Pacers coach Rick Carlisle can say “New York has got an amazing, fighting spirit” minutes after his team guts them, and the compliment lands as grace, not weakness. Here, sports become a rehearsal for democracy itself — where vigorous disagreement finds common ground in mutual rules and shared stakes.
The payoff isn’t just rivalry; it’s the mutual recognition forged in the fight. New York respects the grit that exists west of the Hudson. Indiana learns that swagger, in the form of channeled confidence rather than careless bravado, can itself be a disciplined path to victory. After Game 1, Haliburton mimicked Miller’s choke gesture — half homage, half trolling. Knicks fans booed, but many also smiled; they’d seen this play before, and nostalgia tugged at the edges of their fury. Memory tempers malice.
What does this teach the rest of us? First, that identity need not calcify into stereotype. Indiana’s roster features a Brooklyn-born forward; New York’s starting lineup includes a Missouri swingman. Talent is freely for hire, cultures blend, yet the jerseys still signify something real. Regional pride evolves without erasing its roots, proving identity can be expansive rather than restrictive.
Second, that contempt can coexist with respect. Mitchell admitted that if you hit Miller in the ’90s, the Pacers would hit your best player. Brutal, but bound by a code. Today’s social feeds encourage cheap shots without consequence; a playoff series enforces boundaries.
Finally, we remember that humility — rare currency in the Twitter economy — often arrives via scoreboard. The Knicks spent all season crowned by late-night hosts and runway-ready stars; now down 2-0, they’re left to brood on a flight toward uncertain redemption. Hoosiers, accustomed to being overlooked, grinned but did not gloat. The series is long, and basketball, like democracy, punishes the smug.
So tune in. Watch the Garden crowd rise and fall like a Broadway chorus, watch Gainbridge Fieldhouse echo with Midwestern vowels, watch two Americas argue the old-fashioned way — by keeping score. Some nights the Big City will prevail; others, an overgrown Midwestern town. But either way the rest of us win. For a couple of spring weeks, at least, we can trade insults without consequence and walk away reminded that pluralism is messy, competitive — and thrilling when the ball is in the air.
Joshua Claybourn is a lawyer and historian based in Indiana.
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