Tyrese Haliburton tied the game with a long jumper that bounced on the back of the edge and in time expired in the regulation, then the Indiana Pacers finished their impressive rally by beating the New York Knicks 138-135 on Wednesday night in game 1 of the finals of the East Conference.
The Knicks led by 14 points with less than three minutes in the regulation, but Aaron Nesmith brought the Pacers back with a burst of late triples.
Haliburton hoped he would have won it with another. With the Bajo Dos Pacers and time, he began to lose control of his dribble, recovered it and dripped towards the 3 -point line. He accumulated his jumper and when he finally fell, he ran towards the lateral line and made a strangulation signal to the crowd, as Reggie Miller did, as the member of the Pacers Hall of Fame, Reggie Miller, while led a return of the Pacers in a playoff game in 1994.
Replay confirmed that Haliburton’s finger was on the line and it was a 2 points that tied it at 125. Andrew Nembhard finally made the advantage basket with remaining 26 seconds in OT.
Game 2 is Friday night.
Haliburton had 31 points and 11 assists. Nesmith ended up with 30 points, going 8 by 9 from the range of 3 points.
It was an exciting beginning for the ninth confrontation of playoffs among these fierce rivals of the 1990s, but an deflated end to the Knicks in their first game of the East Conference finals since 2000.
Jalen Brunson scored 43 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 35 points and 12 rebounds. But the Knicks could not protect the great advantage they built while Brunson was in the bank in trouble in the last quarter and had a collapse like any other in the postseason.
The teams led by at least 14 points in the 2:45 finals of the fourth quarter had been 994-0 since the game per game began staying in 1997-98.
The Pacers beat the Knicks in game 7 of the semifinals of the East at Madison Square Garden last year, encruting a team that had been decimated by injuries.
This was a completely different way from winning, with the Pacers looking almost out of the game after the 14-0 race of the Knicks with Brunson in the bank pushed the advantage of two points from New York to 108-92.
Even after Nesmith began to heat up, the Knicks seemed safe when Triple Brunson did it 119-105 with 2:51 for the end. But Nesmith would then hit consecutive 3s and both free throws when the Knicks were committed intentionally so that he could not try to tie him with another, giving Indiana the opportunity to tie the Haliburton shot.
