Three reasons for Knicks optimism despite historic Game 1 collapse to Pacers in Eastern Conference finals

We're only one game into a seven-game series

Take a deep breath, New Yorkers. I know the Knicks just lost Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals in historic fashion. I know all of the good vibes from the Boston series seemingly just went up in smoke. I know you've lost home-court advantage against perhaps your team's greatest historical rival. 

But I just want you to remember one thing: it was one game out of a seven-game series. We still have a week and a half of basketball potentially left to play. The Celtics series still happened. The Knicks have beaten the Pacers in several playoff series before. They are 5-1 on the road this postseason, so losing home-court advantage is not necessarily a death blow. This series is far from over.

Knicks have benefited from highly improbable comebacks all playoffs, and the script finally got flipped

Brad Botkin

That's a hard sentiment for Knicks fans to grasp right now, but the truth is, aside from the horrific final minutes, Game 1 was actually fairly promising for New York. A lot of the things that they needed to happen to win this series ultimately happened, and if they keep happening, it's entirely possible that Game 1 turns out to be a blip in an otherwise successful series for the Knicks. So here are three reasons for optimism the Knicks have after the apocalyptic ending of Game 1.

The Pacers still can't stop Jalen Brunson

Jalen Brunson has played eight playoff games against the Pacers and reached 40 points in three of them. To show you how rare that sort of offensive dominance is against a single postseason opponent, LeBron James has played the Toronto Raptors in 13 playoff games and only scored 40 points against them once. "LeBronto" is a meme, and were it not for injuries a year ago, last night's meltdown, we might be heading towards "Jalindiana."

Tyrese Haliburton doesn't offer much defensively, but Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith are sorely underrated and T.J. McConnell has held up reasonably well against Brunson in the past. Indiana's guard defenders are mostly good. It's just that "mostly good" is a step down from Ausar Thompson, Derrick White and Jrue Holiday. The freedom of movement Brunson experienced in Game 1 was pretty jarring visually, considering the series he just came out of. He was able to get to his spots relatively comfortably.

Nembhard is too small for Brunson. McConnell probably is as well, and Nesmith fouls too regularly. Indiana could try trapping him more off of screens. The math says he struggles against doubles in pick-and-roll, but that's playing with fire given how much shooting and ball-handling the Knicks tend to have on the court at any given time. The Pacers allow the sixth-highest field goal percentage in the non-restricted area of the paint in the NBA, Brunson's floater range, and with Karl-Anthony Towns pulling Myles Turner onto the perimeter, the Pacers had precious little size in the paint in Game 1. He shot 9-of-12 in that part of the floor on Wednesday.

Brunson isn't going to score 40 every night, but this is still probably the most favorable matchup of the postseason for him thus far. He's not the only Knick that's true for.

Karl-Anthony Towns is making 3s

It's going to get lost in the loss, but Towns scored a playoff career-high 35 points in Game 1. Offensively, at least, Towns did just about everything right on Wednesday. He kept Turner out of the paint for long stretches of the game, and the Knicks scored 62 points in the paint as a result. In the first round, when Detroit put a wing on him in Tobias Harris, it nearly short-circuited him. When he got away from Turner in Game 1, though? He went hard at the basket, making all four of his field goal attempts with Pascal Siakam as his primary defender and earning nine free-throw attempts.

But, most importantly, he made his jumpers. That was no given after the Boston series. Towns made three 3-pointers in six games against the Celtics. He made four in Game 1 against the Pacers alone. Making 3s is the norm for Towns, but it seemed as though a hand injury suffered against Boston might impact his ability to make jumpers for the rest of the postseason. Game 1 indicated that it won't be the case.

New York's offense relies on Towns serving as a meaningful 3-point threat. Josh Hart has hit his 3s in the playoffs, but he's rarely going to be guarded especially vociferously, so if Towns isn't pulling the defense away from the basket, things can start to get pretty cramped inside. That's especially true when New York goes to its double-big alignment, which leads into our next point.

There's obviously low-hanging fruit here

No team leaned more on its starters than the Knicks did this season. Their starting five played 940 regular-season minutes. Only two other five-man units in all of basketball played even half as much. This is obviously a Tom Thibodeau staple. He plays his best players more than any coach in basketball. But for several months now, it has emphatically not worked.

New York's starters were great for the first few months of the season. They got outscored in the 379 minutes they played from Jan. 1 on. This trend has continued into the playoffs. New York's starters have played 292 minutes in the postseason. They've been outscored by 37 points. Now, in the regular season, New York's hesitance to trust the bench was warranted. In the playoffs, though, at least their top two reserves have been mostly spectacular. Deuce McBride is making his shots. Mitchell Robinson is owning the glass and flying around the floor defensively. All of this shows in the lineup data.

The Knicks have had 22 different five-man lineups outscore their playoff opponents. Eight of those lineups have had at least 10 minutes of playing time. Seven of those eight include McBride. Six include Robinson. New York's best playoff lineup features both: Brunson, Hart, Robinson, McBride and OG Anunoby have outscored playoff opponents by 25 points in 36 minutes.

Condense this down into Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. We have a nearly perfect playing time split: 26 minutes for the starters, 27 for everyone else. The starters lost their minutes by 16 points. Lineups that included at least one reserve won their minutes by 13.

So does this mean the Knicks need to bench a starter? No. All five Knicks starters are essential for some reason or another. But for whatever reason, they just aren't clicking as a collective right now. The total minutes distribution probably doesn't need to change much. The Knicks just need to use more lineups featuring three or four of them rather than all five.

On paper, Robinson and McBride are essential elements of a Knicks victory in this series. Indiana ranked 28th in the NBA in rebounding rate and the Knicks pulled in over 60% of available rebounds when Robinson was on the floor in Game 1. Rick Carlisle teams always rely on several ball-handlers and McBride generates a ton of ball-pressure. Both of them bring things to the table that the Knicks are going to need to win this series. Leaning on them more and ensuring that at least one is on the floor most of the time is the easiest adjustment Thibodeau can make heading into Game 2.