Pacers knock out Knicks with team approach
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
INDIANAPOLIS – The postgame podium has never been more full.
A combined 33 feet, 3 inches of humanity and 1,169 pounds of pure basketball muscle sat atop the dais – smiling, united and moving onto the Eastern Conference finals.
All five Pacers starters. Five microphones. One huge goal accomplished. One team. One heartbeat.
Indiana wouldn’t have it any other way. A team without a superstar knocked one of the NBA’s biggest out of the playoffs with a 106-99 victory over the New York Knicks on Saturday in Game 6 before a raucous, ear-splitting gold-clad crowd at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The Pacers won the series 4-2, their fourth victory in the last five playoff matchups with New York, and advance to face the Miami Heat in a rematch of last season’s second-round.
-It’s all about culture and how we go about our business,” said center Roy Hibbert, who was a rock in the middle and played his heart out in a playoff-career high 42 minutes, finishing with 21 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks.
Carmelo Anthony tried to carry the Knicks to a victory with his individual brilliance. But the more talented Pacers roster had a surprise in store: unheralded Brooklyn-born Lance Stephenson, a second-round draft pick three years ago who was a reserve at the beginning of the season and who was formerly best known for flashing the choke sign at LeBron James.
Stephenson choked the life out of the Knicks with a personal 7-0 run in the fourth quarter after the Pacers had let a 12-point lead morph into a two-point deficit. After Stephenson’s layup tied the game at 92, he intercepted a pass from Anthony and raced down the floor side by side with J.R. Smith, finishing another layup through Smith’s contact and completing the three-point play. A pair of free throws capped the spurt and a twisting bank shot against Anthony two possessions later gave the Pacers a 101-94 lead with 1:53 to play. Game over. Knicks’ season over.
New York coach Mike Woodson said Stephenson’s career night (25 points, 10 rebounds) came out of nowhere. The Pacers knew better.
-He has some of the best basketball instincts I’ve ever been around,” coach Frank Vogel said. -Put him in a situation like this, Game 6 and a closeout game, and he’s got a lot of guts.”
His emergence to elevate the Pacers and complement Paul George, George Hill, David West and Hibbert was a perfect summation of what made the franchise successful this season. On any given night, the offense could come from one of half a dozen places. Guarding Indiana is difficult because the starting lineup is a Swiss Army knife of defenders, scorers, passers and rebounders.
-I tip my hat to the Pacers,” Woodson said. -They were still the aggressor tonight. We didn’t get it done.”
Stephenson closed the first half by abusing Pablo Prigioni on a drive. He pulled down more rebounds in the first quarter (six) than the entire Knicks team (five). He single-handedly forced the Knicks out of the full-court press they were using early in the game. And he did it all on a poor night’s rest.
-I couldn’t sleep,” said Stephenson, who displayed a maturity beyond his 22 years. -I couldn’t wait for this game. I played to my ability.”
The Pacers played to theirs in a series that went the way they should have expected. Anthony, who came up with a series-high 39 points Saturday, was the best player. He just didn’t have the talent around him to punish the league’s best defense.
Indiana won Game 6 on the strength of a powerful offense that shot 51 percent and earned 46 trips to the free-throw line. New York center Tyson Chandler fouled out; so did his backup, Kenyon Martin. The Knicks spent all night hacking, grabbing, tugging, bumping and reaching. And they did so right into the offseason.
-We put them on the line a lot and that was a big difference,” Woodson said.
Indiana’s tight-knit starting five scored 98 of the team’s 106 points, grabbed 37 of the team’s rebounds and praised the bench when speaking about the upcoming battle with Miami. That’s the type of locker room the Pacers say they have. West says every player on the team speaks to all 14 teammates at least once a day.
Almost everyone was needed to vanquish a desperate Knicks team which finally resembled the club that finished with the third-best offense in the NBA. New York was 13-of-30 from behind the arc, highlighted by 3-point makes on four straight possessions in the third quarter. Iman Shumpert (19 points) knocked down four triples and scored 16 of the Knicks’ 34 points in the period.
With the game tied at 81 after three quarters, the series was up for grabs. When New York scored on three of its first six trips in the final stanza, and led 89-86, the arrow was trending toward the orange and blue, a welcome sight for movie director and Knicks superfan Spike Lee, who sat courtside across from the New York bench.
-It was great composure,” Vogel said. -The Knicks gave us their best shot. We knew we had to get back to doing what we do and we would settle down and prevail.”
Lee and the Knicks flew home deprived of what might have been a glorious Game 7 at Madison Square Garden.
Saturday marked the first truly big game for this Indiana group, competing as favorites against a very good opponent in a closeout situation, and a failure by the Pacers on this stage would have been a monumental disappointment and – pardon the pun – a golden opportunity lost.
Instead, Stephenson came out fired up over his meek effort two nights earlier. George was more judicious with the ball than he was in Game 5, attacked off the dribble and only took 3-pointers when they were open.
When New York stormed back, the Pacers weren’t about to panic. When Stephenson played the entire third quarter without getting a shot off, he just kept plugging away.
Hill, meanwhile, was a game-high plus-12 – despite not finding out until 1 p.m. that he was cleared to play after recovering from a concussion – by playing superlative defense on Knicks penetrator Raymond Felton and icing the game with four clutch free throws in the final minute.
Ironically for a team that learned how to win in large part due to a rare signing of a marquee free agent, this game was as much a victory of a balanced, unitary approach as anything else.
-This is the most [unified] group I’ve ever been a part of,” said West, who signed with Indiana after the 2011 lockout. -Everybody has a conversation throughout the day. That’s huge, especially in tough situations, tough environments. Guys are never looking for theirs. We’ve got confidence in everybody. That’s what we’ve been all year. We don’t have any egos. We don’t have ‘I’ guys. We have ‘we’ guys. If it’s Paul’s night, if it’s Roy’s night, it doesn’t matter as long as we’re all working toward the same goal.”
Also, this game marked a meeting of expectations. The Pacers are in the conference finals. Whether they win them or not, baseline standards were met. No longer are the Pacers a surprise newcomer to the postseason picture. This is a team that showed off its immense talent, particularly defensively, and will now square off with the best team in the NBA.
In so doing, the Pacers have reached the plateau they hope to now visit on a regular basis. Granted, they have nothing to lose against the defending champions in this round, but in coming seasons – as George gets even better and perhaps blossoms into a superstar – the Pacers will deal with more adversity and higher expectations.
-I’m proud of the year-long effort to take that next step,” Vogel said. -We’re not satisfied. We feel like there’s no ceiling on this team this year. And we’re looking forward to the next (several) years.”
For now they are 15 guys enjoying the moment. For an entire season, they operated collectively, and their “star” was a five-man unit. Wherever the journey takes them, they’ll do it together.
