Pacers vs. Knicks Game 5 Best Bets: Indiana Has Rhythm and Defense

Tonight’s Game 5 Situation

The Pacers will try to close out New York tonight.

They have experienced two close-out situations so far. In both instances, they were successful:

• In the first round, they withstood 19 three-pointers from Milwaukee to beat the Bucks.
• In the second round, they won in Cleveland by nine points.

In that second-round close-out game, they held the Cavaliers to 105 points, which was a series-low offensive output for them and which speaks to the effort and concentration that one must expect from Indiana in close-out situations.

The Spread

The Knicks are favored by 4.5 points tonight. However, this series has shown that they do not deserve to be favored.

Home court advantage, first of all, is not an advantage for them, as they have been stronger on the road. Their one win in this series took place in Indiana. At home in this series, they are 0-2. More extensively, they lost by 22 at home to Boston in the second round, and both of their losses to the Pistons in the first round came in New York.

Conversely, the Pacers in these playoffs are 6-1 on the road, with the one loss coming in Game 3 —they are 0-3 in Game 3s thus far.

Fool Me Twice?

Since oddsmakers are favoring the Knicks because they are the home team, the spread feels like a gift for the Pacers. When people expected the Knicks to bounce back from their Game 1 defeat, they were favored heavily for Game 2 and lost by five points.

I don’t understand why anybody would have so much trust in them as to bet on them when they are favored against Indiana. If anything, if you want to play some sort of desperation angle, then the Knicks’ first quarter would be logical, except the Knicks have lost the last two first quarters by a combined total of twelve points because their starting lineup is outmatched by Indiana’s.

New York’s Insufficient Depth

But you can’t bet on the Knicks for the full-game, either, because they lack Indiana’s depth.

Whereas the Knicks like to rely on few players and only in Game 4 tried giving useless backups some minutes, the Pacers are loaded with scorers, including spark plug T.J. McConnell with his ten-to-twelve points in Games one through three and fellow bench weapon Bennedict Mathurin with his 20 points in Game 4, which echoed the immense success that he enjoyed against the Knicks in their regular season affairs.

As the end of Game 1 showed, even a dominant Knicks output through three-plus quarters ultimately represents a futile effort on their part because they lack the energy to clinch a victory. Their lack of depth is intensified by Indiana’s pace and by Indiana’s relentless offensive actions, which force the Knicks’ defense into mistake after mistake. New York’s depth could get worse tonight: Karl-Anthony Towns is reportedly listed as ‘questionable’ with a knee injury.

People trying to defend the Knicks will point out that their games have been pretty close, but the Pacers’ superior ability to execute at the end of games has been a consistent fact, which is a fruit of their superior depth and energy.

The Jalen Brunson Issue

Even if the Knicks mitigate their fatigue issue by continuing to give bench players more minutes, the Pacers are still the better all-around team with guys like McConnell and Mathurin being clearly more potent offensively than the likes of Miles McBride and Landry Shamet while Tony Bradley has combatted New York’s rebounding edge, set effective screens, and added rim protection and Ben Sheppard’s defense has pestered Jalen Brunson.

The best option for guarding New York’s offensive centerpiece is Aaron Nesmith, who in Game 4 held Brunson to a 3-of-13 field goal conversion rate in 30 minutes. He is a uniquely solid option to guard Brunson with. Nesmith’s length and other physical tools enable him to limit Brunson’s ability to score in isolation.

Isolation Game Doesn’t Translate

Even if Brunson is as sharp as he can be, though, he presents a grave problem for New York’s offense. First of all, the Knicks throughout the year have allowed way more PPP (points per possession) with him on the court than off because he is a bad defender.

Second of all, their ability to go on runs with Brunson on the bench, which end when Brunson returns — as evident in the fourth quarter in Game 1, for example — suggests that the team as a whole plays better when Brunson is sitting.

Brunson is such a ball-dominant player that his teammates visibly find it awkward to play with him. With Nesmith guarding Brunson, his offensive ceiling is severely capped because he won’t dominate in isolation, certainly not to an extent that makes up for his teammates’ lack of rhythm and involvement in their offense and for his bad defense, which create a negative outlook for the Knicks even when Nesmith is off the court.

New York’s Awful Defense

The Knicks, who just allowed 130 points in Game 4, have proven in this series that they can’t defend on a high enough level with enough consistency against the Pacers.

They talk about making mistakes on defense and about avoiding those mistakes, but they keep making them. Towns, for example, is a terrible ball-screen defender — and has been all year long — in part because he never has grasped how to position himself well in ball-screen situations.

Even without Towns, the Knicks lack someone who can stay in front of Indiana’s offensive centerpiece, Tyrese Haliburton, who is scoring nearly seven more points per game in this round than he did in either of the previous two rounds and is getting four more assists per game than he did in the second round.

Matchup Nightmare New York Can’t Solve

Haliburton loves getting to the basket against a team that lacks rim protection, which New York lacks especially with the respect that it has to pay to the shooting ability of Indiana’s center. His driving ability, emboldened by New York’s deficient rim protection, and his playmaking ability — unlike Brunson, he gets teammates involved and amasses assists — make Indiana lethal in the half-court.

The Pacers’ high-scoring outputs in this series are also a product of their ability to establish their preferred style of play regardless of location. With guys like Haliburton and Pascal Siakam, they are too tough for the Knicks to stop in transition.

When New York, as an exception, managed to slow things down in Game 2 to create a more half-court-oriented affair, the Pacers won by five in New York because they were still very efficient in the half-court. New York lacks an answer for Siakam, who is scoring eight more points this round than he did in the previous round.

The Pacers thrived in the second round against a Cleveland big man combo that was defensively way more solid than anything that New York can offer with Towns and Mitchell Robinson. They continue to thrive inside while adding potent shooting from behind the arc with guys like Haliburton, plus the extremely efficient Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard, who capitalize on New York’s ball-screen defense woes and slow rotations.

Takeaway

In Indiana, we are getting the better team at plus money. The Pacers are dogged because they are playing on the road, even though they are stronger on the road, and because the Knicks are at home, even though they are better in their away games.

With its lack of depth and its porous defense, New York does not deserve to be favored tonight against an Indiana team that, with its weapons and its superior team rhythm, will have no problem covering the spread.

NBA Pick: Pacers +4.5 (-113) at BetOnline

Pacers +4.5 (-113)

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