It's Killer Time: Knicks Must Salvage Collapse to Pacers

"It’s our job to make history so we’re not here to repeat history,” Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns said in the somber aftermath, per Barbara Baker of Newsday. “We’re here to make history, so that doesn’t pop into my mind. I have to think about the present and what we can do now so we can make our own history.”

The darkly poetic twist of the NBA postseason is that heroics can be rendered null over the course of a lasting series. Memories of John Starks' famed dunk over Horace Grant and Michael Jordan, for example, are no doubt diluted with the knowledge that the 1993 Knicks eventually became the final victims of the Chicago Bulls' first championship three-peat.

But a singular game carries lasting repercussions from a metropolitan perspective, ones that will only be silenced by a punched ticket to the NBA Finals.

If the 2024-25 NBA season was a video game, the Knicks would have beaten it, having accomplished the unspoken yet prevalent goal of breaking through the second-round ceiling to reach the NBA's final four for the first time in a quarter-century. Any currency they use over the next month is house money, and anything they do from here on out could, and frankly should, be played with a sense of healthy reckless abandon.

But the first dozen games of the Knicks' playoff trip—and maybe even more—prove they're capable of more. They can go toe-to-toe with kickstarted projects and established champions alike. They can fall behind by 20 and still make things exciting, even victorious. They can sit Jalen Brunson—their franchise face, their captain, their Clutch Player of the Year—for extended periods and keep on keeping on, as noted by an improbable 14-0 run that the point guard played only a mere witness to.

Simply put, that's what makes already-painful showings like Wednesday's even more inedible. The Knicks are supposed to be beyond such hardwood malarkey, beyond capable of such a performance. The 1995 group bewitched by Miller is partly excused because it was fresh off a Finals appearance, and perhaps even entitled to such a historic mulligan.

This squad, on the other hand, has gained no such privilege and what Haliburton, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, and Co. did threatens to tear away at what has been built. Combine that with the fact that this series is supposed to be the Knicks' atonement for last year's unlucky parlay with the Pacers—one that saw most, nearly all, of their major talents fall to injury—and the aftershocks go far beyond the scoreboard.

“In the playoffs, when you win it’s the best thing ever and when you lose it’s the worst thing ever,” said Jalen Brunson, whose 43-point showing was wasted in defeat, per Peter Sblendorio of the New York Daily News. "The best way to deal with all that is to stay level-headed and make sure we have each other’s backs. Obviously, I thought we would go on to finish the game, but tomorrow we have to watch film, get better and make sure we’re ready for Game 2.”

Save for the famed instigator's narration in TNT's NBA swan song, Miller Time is over in New York. But Game 1's dreary finale could nonetheless leave a lasting hangover.