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NEW YORK — In a win-or-go-home scenario at Madison Square Garden, Knicks star point guard Jalen Brunson outplayed Pacers star point guard Tyrese Haliburton to stave off elimination and avoid an embarrassing five-game series loss. It's as simple as that.
The hard part: Brunson has to do this two more times. And he has to do it not just to win the series (which Indiana still leads 3-2), but has to make history in the process -- overcoming a 3-1 deficit -- and would need to guide the Knicks all the way back in order to avoid Haliburton leapfrogging him in the NBA hierarchy of most valuable players.
That's the power of the playoffs. The urgency and pressure of a do-or-die game can wither a lot of teams; the Knicks showed they aren't one of those, and it all started with Brunson's composure and heady leadership.
The Knicks beat the Pacers 111-94 in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals on Thursday night, never ceding the lead and putting up the best defensive performance against Indiana this postseason. It was the first time the Pacers couldn't crack 100 points in these playoffs.
Every win and every loss materializes for so many reasons, but the most obvious part on each ledger Thursday came down to Brunson being better than Haliburton. It was symbolic and symbiotic. Brunson was ready and that was evident immediately; the Knicks won easy. Haliburton was oddly ineffective and couldn't tap into his greatness; Indiana lagged for the better part of 48 minutes.
The surprise of that is Haliburton happened to be fresh off one of the best single-game showings by any player in league history. His 32 points and 15 assists and 12 rebounds and four steals and zero turnovers in Game 4, a restorative 130-121 Pacers win, was the first time those totals had ever been met in any game ever since turnovers became an official stat in 1977-78.
On Thursday night, Haliburton was a shell of himself: eight points, six assists, two rebounds, two steals and just seven shots. He hadn't taken fewer than 15 attempts in a playoff game this season until the Knicks blitzed and baffled him here at the Garden. Though Indiana did cut a big lead down to 12 midway through the fourth quarter, there would be no miraculous comeback here like there was in Game 1. Haliburton didn't even play the final two-plus minutes.
"To start the game we didn't have the right level of force, the right level of attitude necessary in this environment," Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.
This coincided with Brunson setting the tone early. A rowdy Knicks crowd starving for a definitive win was treated to a tone-setting start by Brunson, who scored the first six points of the game and logged 14 points in the first quarter.
He finished with 32 on 12-of-18 shooting (4-of-7 from 3), plus five boards and five dimes.
"He was cooking," Karl-Anthony Towns said. And KAT had some concoction of his own, tallying 24 points and 13 rebounds in 36 minutes after being designated a game-time decision. (As if anyone believed a sore left knee was going to limit him in a crucial Game 5.)
By the middle of the second quarter, Haliburton's impact was muted and Indiana was too far behind to make up for ground lost. And when Brunson had eight points in a blur in the opening minutes of the second half -- the Knicks lead ballooning to 20 -- it felt like New York couldn't and wouldn't allow itself to crumble.
"There were a multitude of things going wrong," Carlisle said.
Haliburton admitted the Knicks added some wrinkles defensively that caused some of his faults, but insisted "our pace has to be better, and that starts with me."
Brunson -- who still has a lot of that postgame humility that was programmed into him from his time at Villanova -- didn't cop to the game being any kind of referendum on his response to Game 4. Even if his play correlated to a win and Haliburton's off night was the biggest reason Indiana didn't stand a chance, Brunson was his typical diplomatic self afterward.
"Our backs are against the wall," he said. "I wasn't thinking, I need to play better than him. I was just thinking, I need to help my team win."
Brunson, who can be hunted on defense, was certainly above average on Thursday night. Statistically this doesn't rate as one of his best games ever, but taking into account the circumstances, it's probably among his most important.
"That's something Cap always does," Towns said. "He always answers the call."
As for Haliburton, now he has to swing heavy in the opposite direction. Afterward, he put it plainly and confidently: "I gotta do better, and I'll be better in Game 6."
How marvelous would it be to get great versions of these two great guards on Saturday night? It seems in store. The Knicks have a lot to overcome, well beyond the necessity to win on the road. In NBA history, teams that lead 3-1 are 284-13 all time; that's a 95.6% success rate. Indiana is 10-0 when up 3-1 in a series. The Knicks are 0-15 when down 3-1. Plus: The Pacers haven't lost two in a row since early March. Now the Knicks need to do three in a row.
That'll take Brunson being his near-best, if not outright best, and in the process lifting up everyone around him. If Brunson hasn't achieved superstar status yet (though you can make the case he's there), then rallying New York from a 3-1 deficit to reach the NBA Finals would erase all doubt. The issue is the guy he's going up against is just as good -- if not better. And between Brunson and Haliburton, whoever is still playing against Oklahoma City next week will be one notch above the other, because at this point there's very little separating the two.
And we've got two games left, at most, to render a verdict.