Knicks acknowledge they let up late in Game 1 loss to Pacers - ESPN

NEW YORK — On Wednesday, just before the clock struck midnight, New York Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson sat down at the podium to take questions on yet another improbable comeback.

But this time, the mentally tough New York club — which staged a trio of unthinkable victories after trailing by double digits in its series with the Boston Celtics — found itself on the wrong end of the spectacle.

With just under three minutes to play and with the roar of their Madison Square Garden crowd behind them, the Knicks led the Indiana Pacers by 14 points. But through an array of defensive mistakes and costly turnovers, they lost in overtime 138-135 to open the Eastern Conference finals on the sourest of notes.

By their own admission, the defeat stemmed from the Knicks failing to run through the finish line.

«Defensively, we let off the gas. The intensity and physicality weren't there,» wing Josh Hart said. «Offensively, we were playing slower, and more stagnant. It looked like we were playing not to lose.»

Said center Karl-Anthony Towns, who finished with 35 points and 12 rebounds: «There's a lot of things we did good and we put ourselves in position to win. We played 46 good minutes. Those 2 minutes [are] where we lost the game, and that's on all of us.»

It's hard to imagine how those 170 seconds could have been any worse for New York.

Needing perhaps a single stop to close the game out, the Knicks couldn't get one. The Pacers managed to shoot 6-for-6 over that span; five of those makes were 3-pointers, and four of them came from Aaron Nesmith, who caught fire to finish with 30 points.

«He got too much airspace,» Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said afterward.

The only Indiana basket during that stretch that wasn't a trey — Tyrese