Knicks Seek to Solve Post-Halftime Woes

Comeback victories no doubt make for good basketball theater, but the New York Knicks hinted that they might want to be a little more boring as they postseason journey continues.

The Knicks earned a 4-1 lead series win in Game 5 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series with the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday ... but not the one many New Yorkers were hoping for when they stepped into Madison Square Garden's hallowed halls.

New York has owned a halftime lead in four of the five games played in the series thus far, but still needs one lead at the end of a second half to officially punt the Pistons. It failed to earn that triumph on Tuesday, as Detroit staged a mini comeback from a one-point deficit at intermission to take a 106-103 decision at MSG.

"We've got to figure out how to come out of halftime better," Josh Hart said in video from SNY. ""We go into halftime with a lead and then we go into the fourth quarter down, so we've got to figure that out. We've got to come out of halftime more aggressive and punch first."

The Knicks have not won any of the five third periods played in their series with the Pistons. They only lost Tuesday's edition by four but that was partly beautified by a late run of nine points in a row that erased a Detroit lead that summitted at 10.

Letting up sizable runs in the third has been a troubling trend for the Manhattanites, forcing them into thrilling yet tense fourth quarter scrambles against the notoriously physical Pistons. Tempting hardwood fate is certainly tantalizing when Jalen Brunson, the newly-minted NBA Clutch Player of the Year, dons a New York uniform, but it's not exactly a viable strategy ... and the Knicks are learning that the hard way.

"We haven't put ourselves in a position to get a commanding win," Karl-Anthony Towns said in another video from SNY. "We've been very gritty this whole series and physical and it's allowed us to find a way, a lot of times to win ... You can only do it so many times before it comes back to bite you. I think that tonight, we put ourselves in that position and we didn't find a way to get that magical ending."

To Towns' point, the average margin of victory in the Knicks-Pistons series is 4.6, the closest tally by among the four Eastern matchups and tops in the NBA overall (only the Western series between Houston and Golden State is also below 10 at 9.75).

Such a gambit is dangerous enough against Detroit, but one can only imagine what the Boston Celtics, the Knicks' potential second-round foe, will have to say about such third period swoons. But the Knicks can't be thinking green just yet, as another thirsty third has them heading back to Detroit for another close-out opportunity thanks to a slow emergence from the halftime locker room.