Pacers are a win from the NBA Finals and the Knicks need another playoff comeback

NEW YORK -- — The Indiana Pacers need just one win to reach the NBA Finals and they already have two of them at Madison Square Garden in this series.

They can finish off the New York Knicks quickly, just like they play. But while the Pacers like their games fast, they were trying not to get ahead of themselves as they prepared for Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals on Thursday night.

“We’re still pretty young so we’re learning by some of the experience that we’re getting right now, but we’ve got to stay in the moment,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “We’ve got to keep our eye on the ball and go day to day and moment to moment here.”

Indiana opened a 3-1 lead with a 130-121 victory Tuesday behind Tyrese Haliburton, who had 32 points, 15 assists and 12 rebounds without a turnover, the first 30-15-10 game in the postseason with no turnovers since they were tracked beginning in 1977-78.

The Pacers have three opportunities to reach the NBA Finals for the second time in franchise history. They fell to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000 in their only time playing for the title.

The No. 4 seed in the East looks ready for another chance. The Pacers are 11-3 in the postseason — unbeaten outside of losses in all three Game 3s — and they have won six straight road games, two shy of the NBA record within one postseason.

They simply ran by the Knicks in Game 4, scoring 22 fast-break points, but Haliburton expects much more resistance when they try to win a series on New York's home floor for the second straight year.

“You can feel good about it for the night, but then you’ve got to be ready to go for Game 5 because their backs are against the wall,” Haliburton said. “They’re going to play as desperate as they can, as they should. They’re going to come out and throw a punch and throw more punches and more punches, and we’ve just got to be able to respond to those.”

The Knicks rallied from a 20-point deficit in Game 3, the third time in this postseason they have done that. Now they need to make a much different kind of comeback: the 14th in NBA history from a 3-1 deficit.

“I mean, we’ve been a team that has kind of found a way to do the impossible when it always seemed impossible. We just keep fighting, so it’s going to be a testament to our whole playoff run,” center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “Now we have to be in one of the biggest fights our lives and of our season, and it starts with next game.”

The Knicks are unsure if Towns can play in it. They are listing him as questionable because of a bruised left knee the All-Star sustained in a collision that left him hobbling late in Game 4, though he was able to finish the game.

Coach Tom Thibodeau has tried a lineup change, inserting Mitchell Robinson to play alongside Towns in a double-big look. He has gone deeper into his bench than usual in search of the right combinations to slow down a Pacers team that has reached 130 points twice in this series after doing so in Game 7 of the East semifinals last year, when they shot an NBA playoff-record 67.1% from the field in a rout at MSG.

The Knicks put themselves in bad positions by committing 17 turnovers in Game 4 that led to 20 points, but they also gave up easy baskets even when their defense was set. It left them with plenty to correct if they wanted to extend their first conference finals appearance since 2000 to a Game 6 in Indiana on Saturday.

“I've never known this team to quit," forward Josh Hart said. “That's not the character of the guys that we have in the locker room. So obviously our backs are against the wall, but we're competitors and we're going to bring it until the series is over.”

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