Pacers Need New Strategy to Stop Knicks' Karl-Anthony Towns

The Indiana Pacers seemed to be in the driver's seat after going up 2-0 on the New York Knicks after winning two thrillers at Madison Square Garden. With home-court advantage stolen, they squandered the advantage somewhat by falling in Game 3 by a final score of 106-100.

Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks made some adjustments, such as starting big man Mitchell Robinson, which allowed them to steal a road win.

The Pacers need to make adjustments of their own if they want to maintain control of the series and close out the Knicks before they grab momentum.

One huge adjustment the Pacers need to worry about is defending center Karl-Anthony Towns.

The Knicks came back from a 20-point deficit, mainly due to the 20-point fourth quarter from Towns. He is a mismatch nightmare when locked in, given his combination of size and guard skills.

Fred Katz of The Athletic talks more about Towns and his impact in his latest article.

"The Pacers have guarded him with centers, most commonly Turner, a deviation from what Towns experienced over the first two rounds of the playoffs, when the Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics used smaller perimeter players to bother him and foist him into suboptimal shot selection," Katz said in the article.

"With Turner on him, Towns is free to rise for 3s; he’s sprier throttling to the basket, as he did on those fourth-quarter drives."

Towns wasn't as successful against the Celtics and Pistons, so the Pacers may need to shift a bit of their defensive focus from Brunson to Towns.

They are doing a good job of slowing down Brunson compared to those other two teams, but now Towns is killing them on the offensive end.

Adjustments are especially important with Towns essentially playing power forward with Mitchell Robinson in the lineup.

The two players fit well together with their contrasting skillsets, so the Pacers need to figure out what matchups work best.

Putting a smaller player, like a Pascal Siakam or Aaron Nesmith, on Towns, and having Myles Turner help off of Robinson could be the neccessary adjustment.

Towns has been successful in the series from outside and driving from the basket, so having the ability to play tighter on him without conceding too much on an aggressive drive could force him to pass the ball off more often.

The Pacers will continue to attack Towns when he is playing on-ball defense, but they also need to do a better job of attacking him when he is on the ball on offense.

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