PG: Awful gameplan, not prepared, not 1 good performance

[Fury]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

Half of those FTs were BS. Mathurin sucks ass.

[Guano]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

[TKKnicks1]

Better record, more talent, no injuries, home court advantage, best closer in the league and we gonna lose this series.

Gotta give credit where credit is due. This Pacers team is out working us and Rick keeps doing the same plays every game. I mean why wouldn't he, we haven't had a single adjustment on how to even guard a Hali/Turner pick and roll. We just keep switching our bigs onto Hali everytime. How in the world is that supposed to be an effective defensive strategy? Every other possession is either Mitch or KAT on an island with Hali. It must be the players fault, right?

[MrDollarBills]

has anyone noticed that the pacers almost never missed an open shot? they move the ball and hit open shots. they won this fair and square

meanwhile we lazily throw the ball away a handful of times per quarter. i guess that's the downside of not having a real point guard like haliburton

They have an actual offense too.

Knicks offense has been more than fine..it’s all about their defense..that’s the difference..but if you really want to look at the offense it starts at the point guard position, haliburton is dominating this series, he’s a shot creator, it’s easy for an offense to look great when your point guard is exceptional at creating shots for his teammates. Brunson is a shot maker, not a shot creator, that right there changes the whole dynamic of the roster. Literally every player on the pacers outside of Tony Bradley can shoot, when the knicks have hart or mitch on the floor or even both, defenses don’t even need to worry about them. The knicks also lack athleticism and shot creators, OG has no handle, Bridges can’t take his player off the dribble. Again it’s easy to sit back and say Indy runs a great offense, which they do, and ignore the roster flaws of the knicks as to why they don’t

I am not ignoring the roster flaws tho.

Isolation offense that has no movement or actions is piss poor offense in 2025. Every bucket is a struggle. It's garbage basketball.

The defense is atrocious and a good bit of that is personnel related, but our offense sucks and I'm not buying that this is the best that we can be.

4 points from Brunson and Towns in the 4th. Unacceptable.

[3toheadmelo]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

[snadler]

They have an actual offense too.

Knicks offense has been more than fine..it’s all about their defense..that’s the difference..but if you really want to look at the offense it starts at the point guard position, haliburton is dominating this series, he’s a shot creator, it’s easy for an offense to look great when your point guard is exceptional at creating shots for his teammates. Brunson is a shot maker, not a shot creator, that right there changes the whole dynamic of the roster. Literally every player on the pacers outside of Tony Bradley can shoot, when the knicks have hart or mitch on the floor or even both, defenses don’t even need to worry about them. The knicks also lack athleticism and shot creators, OG has no handle, Bridges can’t take his player off the dribble. Again it’s easy to sit back and say Indy runs a great offense, which they do, and ignore the roster flaws of the knicks as to why they don’t

I am not ignoring the roster flaws tho.

Isolation offense that has no movement or actions is piss poor offense in 2025. Every bucket is a struggle. It's garbage basketball.

The defense is atrocious and a good bit of that is personnel related, but our offense sucks and I'm not buying that this is the best that we can be.

4 points from Brunson and Towns in the 4th. Unacceptable.

The offense does not suck..this series loss is all about their horrendous defense and turnovers

[KnickLeDime]

The only game this team won was when they gave a damn on defense. What do the Knicks try to do? They try to speed up and run with Indy. It's idiotic and plays right into how Indy wants to play and is built to play. Knicks need to refocus and go all in on the defensive end, do not try to run with them. Maybe, just maybe they can extend the series.

[MrDollarBills]

I think OG needs to go back to the 3. We need another ball handler who can also shoot at the 2. A bigger forward type at the 4.

I’ve been saying all season that one of our biggest issues is the redundancy in skill sets between OG-Bridges-Hart. All 3 are small forwards. The roster desperately lacks a secondary ball handler/traditional ball handler as well as a rim protector.

The roster was better with DiVincenzo than Bridges, even if Bridges is a better player, because his skill sets was complementary.

Yep. A change is needed in this area.

[HEZI]

Generating open looks for guys who shoot bricks isn’t the solution either. How many open looks does Mikal need to brick before we realize he just can’t shoot?

It sucks because due to matchups, Mikal is the easiest to generate good shots for. But he's missing most of them.

Was poetic watching him shoot wild contested shots as our championship hopes disintegrated

What’s worse is he was passing up layups to take contested mid range shots. That’s why it’s funny seeing people complain about our offense as if we are just not giving guys better opportunities. We are but when you are scared of the paint to the point you will take a fadeaway mid range shots instead of taking the layup then it’s the flaw of the player. I mean dude took a fadeaway mid range shot on a leak out fastbreak

[KnickLeDime]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

It was, they are ALWAYS playing from behind and not just this series. I'm not sure what has happened on the defensive end but it's brutal to watch. You can't keep getting down 10+ points in every single game. You then try to speed up to "catch up" and lose focus on defense.

If they are going to play another game after Thursday, they need to go all in on the defensive end.

[MrDollarBills]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

You missed a Thibs masterclass

[whocares1]

to me nobody on this roster should be safe except for mitchell robinson

Bc im sure this team made it to the ECF on the back of Mitchell Robinson…

[Guano]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

Yeah any talk other than how trash our defense was this series is pointless.

They shoot 18947849589% every first quarter in this series. They had 43 points in the first this game.

Nkt being able to get the necessary stops all series was excruciating to watch.

[Guano]

It sucks because due to matchups, Mikal is the easiest to generate good shots for. But he's missing most of them.

Was poetic watching him shoot wild contested shots as our championship hopes disintegrated

What’s worse is he was passing up layups to take contested mid range shots. That’s why it’s funny seeing people complain about our offense as if we are just not giving guys better opportunities. We are but when you are scared of the paint to the point you will take a fadeaway mid range shots instead of taking the layup then it’s the flaw of the player. I mean dude took a fadeaway mid range shot on a leak out fastbreak

This is weird behavior

Read on Twitter

[whocares1]

The only game this team won was when they gave a damn on defense. What do the Knicks try to do? They try to speed up and run with Indy. It's idiotic and plays right into how Indy wants to play and is built to play. Knicks need to refocus and go all in on the defensive end, do not try to run with them. Maybe, just maybe they can extend the series.

They were forced to speed up. That was the adjustment that Carlisle made. They pushed the pace off of every turnover and missed shot. Hell they even did that off of made baskets.

[rajajackal]

to me nobody on this roster should be safe except for mitchell robinson

Bc im sure this team made it to the ECF on the back of Mitchell Robinson…

literally yes

[3toheadmelo]

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

You missed a Thibs masterclass

Not to beat a dead horse but I said since the off season that with the moves we made we were going to be significantly worse on defense than last year. Knicks have some tough decisions to make this summer if they want to go forward with this core or change things up so we can be more balanced on both ends.

[HEZI]

Was poetic watching him shoot wild contested shots as our championship hopes disintegrated

What’s worse is he was passing up layups to take contested mid range shots. That’s why it’s funny seeing people complain about our offense as if we are just not giving guys better opportunities. We are but when you are scared of the paint to the point you will take a fadeaway mid range shots instead of taking the layup then it’s the flaw of the player. I mean dude took a fadeaway mid range shot on a leak out fastbreak

This is weird behavior

Read on Twitter

Yup that was it. Cotton candy soft

[robillionaire]

Who was guarding Mathurin? How tf he went off for 11 free throws in 12 mins

He had a nice lil fun stretch where the refs treated him like he was 2005 Dwade. Highly entertaining.

Looking at the box score it’s crazy that we had Brunson score 31, KAT with 24, OG with 22, Mikal with 17 and we still lost. Our defense must’ve been terrible

They scored 43 points in the 1st quarter and that was with Mitch starting and Towns being on the bench for most of it after getting 2 fouls

I’d love to have some answers for this

[mpharris36]

How is defense not manageable? What some of you are saying is we will never have a shot as long as Brunson is here if you don't think we can win this type of series right now...because its not the offense its how bad our defense is when Brunson is on the court.

But you would think at some point we would change things around. Mix in a zone, pre-switch Brunson out of the screens so that Indy can just pick on Brunson/KAT.

Basically there is no point in having Mikal and OG because if its just that easy to screen them off there best offensive player then what is there value.

KAT and Brunson lead the Knicks in DFG against this playoffs...for example Haliburton the pacers worst defender is 3rd on the team in DFG against in the playoffs...with Nesmith right behind him and Turner and Nembhard two good defenders 1 and 2.

That is why coaching matters!

Its on the margins and we are losing those battles.