Knicks Sink Into 0-2 Hole

To give his team the best chance at getting back in this series, Tom Thibodeau needs to change his starting lineup.

Final Score: Knicks 109 - Pacers 114
Series: 0-2

Coming into Game 1 on Wednesday, I wrote how important it was for New York to get off to a great start. The Garden, hosting its first ECF game in 25 years, would be going nuts, and the Pacers, who hadn't played in eight days, might be rusty. Instead, Indiana got wide-open looks on nearly every offensive possession, made their first eight FG attempts, and jumped out to an 18-11 lead five minutes into the contest. 

After losing the series opener in heartbreaking fashion, it was just as crucial for the Knicks to come out of the gates strong in Game 2 Friday night. Instead, Indiana raced to a 19-9 lead.  

However, thanks in large part to the contributions of Mitchell Robinson and Deuce McBride off the bench (NY went on a 10-0 run after they checked in), New York was able to take a three-point advantage into halftime last night, outscoring Indiana 43-30 to close out the half. Would they be able to build on that lead at the start of the third quarter? 

No. The Pacers went on a 15-7 run at the beginning of the second half.

The common denominator in the sordid stretches mentioned above has been the ineptitude of the Knicks' starting lineup.

In the 43 minutes New York's first five have logged together in the Eastern Conference Finals, they have been outscored by 29 points. Their Defensive Rating in this series is an almost unimaginably awful 155.1. Their Net Rating of -42.9 seems impossibly poor. 

Yet, Tom Thibodeau continues to run them out there. The most remarkable stat may be that NY's starting lineup has logged 43 minutes through two games despite this abundance of incriminating evidence. 

To put that number in context, over in the Western Conference Finals, both OKC and Minnesota's Starting 5 have each played just 18 minutes together over the first two games of their series. 

And it's not as though this is a new issue. It's something we have discussed dating back to the beginning of the calendar year. Over the final three months of the regular season, the Knicks’ starting unit posted a negative Net Rating.

Even in their second-round victory over Boston, New York advanced despite the poor play of this group, with NY's starters being outscored by 24 points (the worst plus-minus of any 5-man unit among all eight teams in the semifinals).