NEW YORK — Tyrese Haliburton smiled widely as he envisioned the scene Sunday when the Pacers host Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals to cap a daylong sports celebration in Indiana.
Yet along with the Pacers’ excitement after winning the first two games against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden came a word of caution. A 2-0 lead guarantees nothing and things can change quickly.
Look no further than last year in a series between these same teams.
“You cannot assume going home is going to be easier. It never is,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “Each game as you ascend in a playoff series becomes harder. New York, they’ve got an amazing fighting spirit.”
The Knicks will have to call upon it after digging themselves a big hole in New York. They blew Game 1 with a bad finish to the fourth quarter, then couldn’t overcome a poor start to the period in Game 2.
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The Indiana Pacers bring a 2-0 series lead home as they look to push the New York Knicks to the brink of elimination and take one step closer to the NBA Finals. Watch Game 3 live Sunday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ starting at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.
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Now they will need to become the first team to lose the first two games at home in the conference finals and come back to win the series.
“We know it’s 2-0 but it’s still a long series,” Knicks guard Mikal Bridges said.
Bridges wasn’t on the Knicks team that took a 2-0 lead over the Pacers last year in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Indiana evened it up when the series changed sites and eventually won it with a Game 7 romp back at Madison Square Garden.
The Pacers may not need to go back to New York this time. A win Sunday and another Tuesday in Game 4 would send them to the NBA Finals for the second time as they chase the franchise’s first title since their ABA days.
An NBA Finals wouldn’t be any bigger than what the Pacers should have Sunday. The Indianapolis 500 is being run that afternoon, with Game 3 tipping off at night. It’s the first time since 2013 the Pacers have a home game the day of the race.
“I’ve been to the 500. It’s crazy, so I can’t imagine all those people then coming over to Gainbridge (Fieldhouse). You know, going to be a rowdy crowd, going to be a little intoxicated. Who knows?” Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton said.
“It’s going to be a special time. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
On the other side, Jalen Brunson was telling the Knicks’ fans to hang in there.
New York’s first trip to the conference finals since 2000 is shaping up to be a short one. The starting unit has put the Knicks into quick deficits in both games and the Pacers’ huge depth advantage may have worn down the Knicks and led to their shaky play in both fourth quarters.
Coach Tom Thibodeau played backup centre Mitchell Robinson longer than All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns in Game 2 for a better hope of stopping the Pacers, but that weakened his team offensively. The Knicks need to figure out the right combinations — if they have any — to both score with and slow down the Pacers.
“For me, what I want to say to them is obviously we’ve got to continue to fight,” Brunson said, when asked his message. “It’s going to take one day at a time, one game at a time. We can’t look ahead, we can’t think about anything other than Game 3 at this point.”
The All-Star point guard has done his part, scoring 43 points in Game 1 and adding 36 more along with 11 assists in Game 2. But the Knicks went cold when he was on the bench to start the final 12 minutes and that turned out to be the decisive stretch of the game.
The Pacers don’t have those problems. Carlisle can go deep into his bench — even for players who hadn’t been in his recent rotation — and Indiana remains just as effective.
Carlisle has continuously called this a 13-day series, referring to the stretch between Game 1 and a potential Game 7 in New York on June 2. After tying K.C. Jones for 10th place on the career list with his 81st post-season victory Friday, he was still thinking that way.
“It’s Day 3 of 13 days and no one’s getting ahead of themselves,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”
