New York Knicks take on Indiana Pacers in NBA 2025 Eastern Conference finals

DUBAi: Beginning on Wednesday, New York and Indiana will meet in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference playoffs for a second straight season as they continue to put a modern twist on a classic NBA rivalry.

This season, they face each other in the conference final; last year, the Pacers defeated the Knicks in seven games at the semi-final stage, rallying from series deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 along the way.

The drama was reminiscent of matchups from a generation ago, when the teams faced each other in the playoffs six times in the space of eight years between 1993 and 2000. During that time Patrick Ewing of the Knicks and Reggie Miller of the Pacers went head-to-head in one thriller after another, helping to define a decade of NBA competition.

• Opportunity knocks: The most recent appearances by the teams in the NBA Finals came 26 years ago for New York and 25 years ago for Indiana. In both cases, one of them beat the other in the conference finals: In 1999, the Knicks defeated the Pacers during a historic run to the Finals as No. 8 seeds.

The following season, Indiana got the better of New York to reach the championship showdown for the first (and still the only) time in franchise history.

The Knicks’ appearance in the conference finals this year is their first since that series defeat by the Pacers in 2000.

• Marquee matchup: Two-time NBA All-Stars Jalen Brunson of New York and Tyrese Haliburton of Indiana will square off in a battle of ascendant point guards who are at their best in the biggest moments.

Brunson’s barrage of late-game buckets and Haliburton’s pair of game-winning shots have been key features of the 2025 playoffs so far. Both players, who helped jump-start their respective franchises upon arrival a