Meet the Pacers!
When the going gets weird, the boys from Indianapolis are never far off
The New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers kick off the Eastern Conference finals Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden. Maybe you’ve spent the past year stuck up in a spaceship, or struggling to make your mental health ends meet against a constant backdrop of genocide and fascism. Maybe you don’t feel as up-to-speed on the 2025 Pacers as you were on the 2024 release. No worries, love. This handy primer gives you all your daily required vitamins and everything you ever needed to know about the latest roadblock to the greatest spring of our lives.
History (then)
Our word “pace” descends from the Latin pandere, meaning to stretch or spread out. An original ABA franchise, the Pacers are named in part for the pace cars from the Indianapolis 500. At home games they blare the sound of engines revving. If ever a team were born to run, it’s this one, and they do. We’ll come back to that.
The Pacers were arguably the ABA’s greatest franchise, winning three titles in that league’s nine-year existence and reaching two more Finals. Times got tough when they joined the NBA, since killing the ABA required the survivors to financially compensate those who weren’t moving on, i.e. the Kentucky Colonels, Spirits of St. Louis and Memphis Sounds of the world. The four new NBA teams also weren’t allowed to share in national revenues their first four years. Their first 17 years in the NBA, the Pacers never won a playoff series.
(Fun note often lost to history: the Portland Trail Blazers get a lotta grief for taking Sam Bowie with the #2 pick in the 1984 draft when Michael Jordan was available, but did you know that pick was originally Indiana’s? A few days before the 1981 draft, the Pacers traded their 1984 first for Tom Owens, a Bronx-born big man who spent a dozen years in the ABA and NBA. Owens, then 31, lasted a year with the Pacers, then was out of the league a year later.)
In 1994, the Pacers finally broke through, winning two rounds and advancing to the conference finals, and very nearly even further.
And thus, a rivalry that began one year earlier with John Starks head-butting Reggie Miller exploded into arguably the greatest in Knicks history. Counting this year’s ECF the teams have now met nine times, in every decade from the 1990s through the 2020s. This is the third time they’ve met in consecutive playoffs. No Knick rivalry burned hotter than the Heat; none means more than the Celtics. But in terms of frequency, no rival has rivaled them more than the Pacers.
Last year the two met with the conference finals the prize. Now the ECF is the setting for their biggest stakes since 2000. Everybody and their mothers had Boston and Cleveland as New York’s two biggest East obstacles, but honestly Indiana makes the most sense. They always have. This is the NBA’s Hatfields and McCoys. France vs. Germany. Scorpion vs. Sub-Zero. Some feuds are forever.
History (now)
There’s a Marvel character named Ink who has tattoos that can make his enemies sick. That sounds like such far-out comic book pulp, and then you consider how many Pacers have tattoos, and how their opponents the past few playoffs all seem to go down with debilitating and/or decisive ailments.
Last year in the first round against Milwaukee, Giannis Antetokounmpo was out the entire series with a calf strain, while Damian Lillard missed two games after straining his Achilles. In the second round you may remember the Knicks were without Julius Randle and Bojan Bogdanović the entire series, plus Mitchell Robinson and OG Anunoby for most of it. This year the Pacers faced the Bucks again in the opening series and Lillard again missed the last few games, tearing the same Achilles he’d strained the year prior. In the semis the Cavs didn’t have Darius Garland the first few games and he didn’t look himself the rest of the series on a bad toe; Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter both missed Game 2, a one-point loss.
Having said that, in the interest of full disclosure Indiana has been about as good as anybody since the calendar flipped to 2025. Before that magical day they were 16-18; after, including the playoffs, they’re 42-20. In that time Tyrese Haliburton is shooting 51% from the field and 43% from deep while averaging nearly seven assists for every turnover. One of the biggest differences between last year’s Pacers and this year’s is that they still like chaos, but it’s a bit more of a methodical, controlled chaos now. Maybe for them it never feels like chaos, given their conductor.
The crowds in Milwaukee and Cleveland both chanted “Overrated!” at Haliburton and they’re both at home now, doing whatever it is swing state voters do in non-election years. I’d advise MSG’s faithful not to follow suit, but the type of fans who can afford to attend the conference finals didn’t get born on third base by caring what anybody thinks. I’ll simply point out whatever one thinks of how or why the Pacers were able to win a Game 7 at the Garden last year, there’s only one group of active players who know what it feels like to do that, and it’s them.
These two teams haven’t played each other in over six months. It’s going to be weird. Whatever else happens, that’s always the case when the Knicks play the Pacers – whether it’s a head-butt, a 25-point quarter, eight points in nine seconds, an impossible-to-miss finger roll rolling out, a 4-point miracle, a posterizing shot block or an entire team all basically contracting leprosy over a seven-game series, these series are always WTFers.
How are the 2025 Pacers different from 2024?
From a Knicks perspective: Karl-Anthony Towns is here. Same goes for Mikal Bridges, and mostly OG and Mitch, too, assuming they last more than 1-2 games in the series.
From the other point of view: the Pacers like to run. A lot. They’ve slowed some – last year they were second in pace, this year seventh – but not much, certainly not compared to the Knicks, who did speed up in their own little way (dead last in pace last year; 26th this year) but whose adagio is still nowhere near Indy’s prestissimo. New York made concerted efforts to get into their halfcourt sets quicker as the Detroit and Boston series unfolded. Will they do the same this round? Or do they try to slow Indiana down as much as possible?
One reason the Pacers run so well is because they run so deep. Case in point: in the playoffs, Karl-Anthony Towns is playing 36 minutes a game, the fewest of any Knick starters. By contrast, Hailburton’s 34 is the most of any Pacer. 10 Pacers play 10-plus minutes a night, versus seven Knicks. The Pacers were fifth in the league in 2-pointers, in part because they were fourth in steals, in part because their depth allows them to apply insistent intense ball pressure for 94 feet and 48 minutes. By the time this series is over Jalen Brunson is going to feel like he played it two miles above sea level.
Note the score. Indiana’s pressing like they’re down three with 20 seconds left, not up 27. The Pacers don’t just pressure you when it’s late-and-close or to change things up. Nolan Richardson would smile seeing 40 minutes of hell extended to 48 by Rick Carlisle’s guys. Their defensive philosophy seems similar this year if you zoom out – pressure and turnovers, and if all else fails hope Myles Turner blocks a shot – although their defensive shot profile has modified a bit. In 2024 the Pacers gave up fewer 3-point attempts and makes than anybody, though their opponents made a pretty precise 37%; this season they’re giving up 24% more 3-point tries, with opponents shooting 36%.
The Knicks tend to shoot few threes but make a good share of them. Is sacrificing quality for quantity something they’ll have to consider against a team that wants a high-volume contest? Or is that playing into their hands?
Some things are going to have to give in this series. Last year, the home team won the first six games of the series; this year, these teams are a combined 9-2 away from home. The Knicks won three straight in the Pistons series and the first two games agains the Celtics; the Pacers have only suffered one losing streak the past three months. The Knicks are an elite offense inside the 3-point line; last year the Pacers gave up more 2-point shots than anyone and this year they’re 25th. They’re absolutely imperfect, but they’re trying to be better, and if half of us were married to someone like that or were that person ourselves this world would be twice the wonder it is.
Anyone who offers you a prediction for this series is a scam artist. The one consistency in 30-plus years of Knicks/Pacers is whatever happens, no one could have guessed it. Indiana is different and difficult and dangerous and deeper than Tartarus. New York is rugged and resilient and relentless and more top-heavy than Johnny Bravo. If contrasting styles make for good fights, we’re in for a classic.
