Knicks, Pacers, And The Appalling Strangeness

"You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

- Graham Greene

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash

Unless you’re a Knicks fan, in which case, God¹ save you, you poor sweet winter child, you can’t help but feel the hilarity of God/The Universe/The Basketball Gods/Life in these playoffs.

The Knicks went down by 20 four times against the Celtics. They won that series 4-1.

They blew a 17-point lead in Game 1, and a 14-point lead with under three minutes remaining.

Every Pacers game is now “Surely, they can’t come back from this, right?” Like watching the drunk guy pull off an increasingly dangerous series of stunts.

Indiana does not laugh at the win probability charts. They take a whiz on them. Their logo should be that cliche bumper sticker of Calvin taking a whizz on “WP%.” ²

A colleague argued that with Boston up 20 in three of the four games vs. New York, they should have won those games. What’s interesting is whether you think of the game as an accumulation of possessions or a time trial. You can play better and lose, this happens all the time. In the regular season, it’s a positive. “Sure, we lost, but it was a good loss, things just didn’t go our way.”

But in the playoffs, you have to make things go your way. That’s it, that’s all sports is at this level.³

Tyrese Haliburton might be the best player in the league right now at making things go his way.

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As another in a long line of evidence that something is deeply wrong with me, I adore this Pacers team, and I can’t deny that part of it is how mad they make everyone. Haliburton’s dorkish demeanor feels genuine to me, someone trying to be cool while knowing he’s not.

The choke sign wasn’t for the win. But just the recognition of the moment, the fact that Haliburton backed up to go for the win and not the tie, that he was willing to embrace that part of the team’s cultural identity… all of it is great. Haliburton is a tremendous villain, which makes him an incredible hero.

The old villain was a sneer, the new villain is a smirk.

When Haliburton rode the bench in the Olympics, he handled it with humor, cracking fun at himself while celebrating his contribution to the team. When they toppled the Bucks, he jumped up on the table to celebrate.

He’s in the moment. He’s not too cool to be excited. This is what we want.

Siakam’s preseason videos stuck with me all year as the Pacers made their run. He held offseason workouts for the team and emphasized over and over again that their mentality had to be dogs, had to be relentless, and that they had to not take what happened last year and think they accomplished something.

Nesmith is such a great story. He stood out at Summer League with Boston as someone who was going to become a guy and he’s developing into this. A deadly shooter who is defending the opponent’s best player.

How about the Toppin dunk?!

Obi in MSG with the double-pump dagger against his old team.

Pestering TJ McConnell, Lego-Man, and Trade Survivor Myles Turner.

What an unbelievably fun bunch of jerks.

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Let’s go back to Haliburton for a second.

I had Haliburton as the first name off my first-team All-NBA fake ballot, and people were aghast at that selection. I had him sixth this past summer on my Top 100, and people hit me with the obnoxious laughing and clown emojis.

Now, I was late to Haliburton. He was a guy Draft Twitter loved and hyped in Sacramento, and I was largely like “Yeah, he’s good.” That first season at the wheel in Indy was when I caught on to how good he is.

Haliburton is legitimately at this point the third-best passer in the NBA behind Jokic and LeBron, and he’s a lot more inventive than LeBron is at this point.

There’s an ongoing discussion of him or Brunson, and I described my position this way: Brunson is a better player, Haliburton is a more impactful one.

Brunson is the guy who’s going to get you that clutch bucket, who’s going to score 42. He’s a Playoff Motherfucker of the Highest Order.

Up until these playoffs, and really until last night (31-11, 1 steal, 2 turnovers), I was still questioning if Haliburton would take over games. Not that the couldn’t, but that players like him always want to let the game come to him.

Not to compare him to Jok, but Nikola Jokic had this problem for the first part of his ascendance, too. He wanted to be just another good player among good players and give guys opportunities.

And you can absolutely argue that Nesmith was the one who took over last night and you’d be right.

But Haliburton was +15 in a 3-point overtime game. These are the areas where the advanced metrics are actually meaningfully helpful. Haliburton was ninth in EPM this season and fifth (!!!) in offensive EPM despite having the lowest usage of anyone in the top 15.

His on/off splits corresponded. The Pacers win when Haliburton is on the floor.

You don’t have to score 40 or have a triple-double or make seven threes to shape the game. Haliburton shapes the game more than better players above him on whatever ranking system you want.

“He wins” is shorthand for “he plays and makes plays that makes his team better.”

It’s evolutionary Nash, and it’s incredible.