Nobody would’ve batted an eye if the New York Knicks laid an egg Thursday night.
Just two nights after taking down the San Antonio Spurs in Las Vegas to win the 2025 Emirates NBA Cup, the Knicks traveled to Indianapolis to take on the Indiana Pacers. And while this Pacers team has been reshaped by injuries and defections into a 6-20 also-ran that looks dramatically different than the crew that brought the Knicks’ season to an ignominious end in the 2025 Eastern Conference finals, it’s also one that had been off since Sunday. That gave Pascal Siakam, Andrew Nembhard and Co. a massive rest advantage against a New York squad that would be missing five rotation players: centers Karl-Anthony Towns (left knee soreness) and Mitchell Robinson (left ankle injury management), forward Josh Hart (abdominal strain) and reserve guards Deuce McBride (left ankle sprain) and Landry Shamet (right shoulder sprain).
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The disparity in freshness showed up quickly, with Indiana needing less than eight minutes to race out to a 16-point lead against a Knicks starting five featuring second-year 7-footer Ariel Hukporti and rookie second-round draft pick Mohamed Diawara. New York would claw its way back, though, with reserve guards Tyler Kolek and Jordan Clarkson scoring to help chip away at the lead, Mikal Bridges scoring 11 of his 22 points in the third quarter, and a pair of clutch 3-pointers by OG Anunoby helping level the score at 111-111 late.
It was a spirited comeback — enough, even if ultimately fell short, to consider it a moral victory for a team not only running on fumes on the road, but also staring down an overnight flight home to New York for a Friday meeting with the Philadelphia 76ers on a back-to-back.
“Our guys had plenty of opportunities to say, ‘We gave it the good ol’ college try , and we’ll wrap it up and go figure it out tomorrow,’” Knicks head coach Mike Brown told reporters after the game. “Especially being in Vegas as long as we were, going through what we went through out there … nobody would have been mad at them on a couple of different occasions if they just threw the towel in.
“That’s not our group.”
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That’s because, in part, that’s not their leader.
It had been a rough fourth quarter for Jalen Brunson: four misses in five tries, some ugly forays into iso-ball late, and a costly turnover dribbling the ball off his own foot with just over a minute to go. But after a pair of Siakam free throws put Indiana up by two with 11.4 seconds to go — after taking a hard foul from longtime quandary Nembhard on the preceding play — Brunson went right to work, driving hard to his right, shaking the dogged Nembhard with a stepback and splashing a 3-pointer to give the Knicks a one-point lead with 4.4 seconds remaining.
Jalen Brunson takes the game-winning 3-point shot over Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
(Dylan Buell via Getty Images)
“Our MVP — the league’s MVP, Jalen Brunson,” Brown said. “We called a timeout, we took another timeout, drew up a different play, and as Jalen’s walking out on the floor, Jalen turns to me, he says, ‘I’m getting this win. I’m going for it.’ I said, ‘You do you. That’s who you are. You do you.’ And he went out, and he came through. That’s what real MVPs do, and I’m glad I’m a part of his team.”
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The Pacers took a timeout and advanced the ball, still having a chance to send the exhausted Knicks home unhappy. But Siakam slipped on his way to collect center Jay Huff’s inbounds pass, giving his old Raptors teammate Anunoby a chance to pounce for a steal …
… and run out the clock to finish off a 114-113 win. The Knicks have now won six straight and nine of 10 to improve to 19-7 — 1.5 games behind the Detroit Pistons, who lost in overtime in Dallas on Thursday, for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
While Brunson finished with 25 points on 10-for-23 shooting to go with 7 rebounds, 7 assists and 3 steals in 34 minutes in the win, the All-NBA point guard sounded a note of frustration with his performance in his postgame interview.
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“Man, I was garbage to start the game, and then my stint in the second half was garbage, as well,” Brunson said. “I want to thank the Lord for Tyler Kolek — for playing the way he’s playing, and saving me.”
The second-year guard out of Marquette followed up his excellent outing in the NBA Cup final with the best game-that-actually-counts-in-the-standings of his career thus far, scoring 16 points, dishing 11 assists and grabbing 6 rebounds in 26 minutes, during which New York outscored the Pacers by 13 points:
Kolek played a grand total of one minute and 52 seconds in New York’s conference finals loss to the Pacers. Now, he’s making a case to stick in Brown’s rotation, helping a short-handed squad remain on a roll, and giving New York’s stars the kind of support they need to stay connected after a rough start so that the captain can close the door when it counts.
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“I knew that I was going to have another opportunity, after the missed shot and the turnover and the missed shot before the turnover,” Brunson said. “I’m just happy the ball went in and we came away with the win.”
