Greatest shot of Tyrese Haliburton’s life and best game of Aaron Nesmith’s career stoke Pacers-Knicks rivalry

NEW YORK — Of all the outlandish sequences and moments that have ennobled Madison Square Garden to rightfully rank among the most storied venues in American sports, what transpired Wednesday night in this building is immediately among the most inexplicable.

The Knicks built a 17-point fourth quarter lead in their first Eastern Conference finals game in 25 years. Superstar guard Jalen Brunson would finish with 43 points, big man Karl-Anthony Towns adding another 35. The sidelines were overgrown with the rich and famous taking in what was literally a once-this-century occasion. 

This was supposed to be New York’s night. Its grand, overdue return to the coveted late-May stage of the NBA Playoffs.

Instead, the Indiana Pacers — thanks in large part to Aaron Nesmith’s 30 points and Tyrese Haliburton’s 31 — rallied to victory in such a viciously delicious way, it gave an old-school rivalry fresh blood and an instantly legendary moment that will be part of NBA playoff highlight reels henceforth, regardless of which team goes on to win what might be an epic best-of-seven Eastern Conference championship. 

The Pacers won by an outrageous final score of 138-135, a Pacers franchise-high in a playoff game. It required 53 minutes, only ending in their favor after their comeback was complemented by an unprecedented Knicks collapse. You typically can’t have one without the other, and on this night they eddied into a vortex of unforgettable late-game dramatics. Haliburton’s game-tying, buzzer-beating shot that required a sky-bound, 10-foot ricochet before falling true was accompanied by a déjà vu image and gesture that will go down in lore in the latest chapter of one of the better rivalries in NBA history.

Haliburton’s 2-pointer to tie it at 125 is now biggest shot of his life, and sure that’s a heavy statement considering all of the other huge shots he already cashed in his still-rising career. Trailing 125-123 and with the clock dwindling (5 … 4 … 3 …) Haliburton maneuvered past Mikal Bridges, only to see big ol’ Mitchell Robinson waiting for him in the paint. Instinctively, Haliburton jitterbugged back to the 3-point line, hoisted the longest possible 2-pointer as he gently fell away, then saw his shot pop off the back iron as if someone punched a pinball machine trigger. 

Right then, 20,000-plus pairs of eyes inside MSG all widened, looked up and waited. 

“I knew it’s going in,” Haliburton said. “It felt like it stuck up there, though. And honestly, when it like went in, I was like all my eyes might have been deceiving me in the moment, but it felt good when it left my hand. So, I thought it was going to go in, and just the ball felt like it was up there for eternity. But, man, just a special moment.”

Haliburton thought he’d hit a 3 to win it. He bolted to the other side of the floor, turned around, saw Reggie Miller courtside (calling the game for TNT) and immediately channeled him. The choke gesture that Miller made toward Spike Lee during the 1994 Eastern Conference finals regenerated in Haliburton, who was mauled by his teammates.

Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton recreates Reggie Miller choke sign after buzzer-beater to tie Game 1 vs. Knicks

Austin Nivison

It turned out Haliburton’s toe was on the line, meaning overtime instead of a Pacers win then and there, right in front of Ben Stiller, Timothée Chalomet, Tracy Morgan and dozens of other famous Knick fans dotting the sidelines. After five more tense minutes — which included former Knick Obi Toppin deciding to throw down a double-clutch dunk in a one-possession game in OT — Indiana finished the job in the bonus session. 

As a result, Haliburton’s choke gesture logs as an instantly legendary moment in the history of that franchise and, really, the NBA Playoffs.   

“I mean, I wasn’t like plotting on anything,” Haliburton said. “Everybody wanted me to do it last year at some different point (against the Knicks). But it’s just gotta feel right, and it felt right at the time. … If I would have known it was a 2, I would not have done it.”

Haliburton’s carnival shot to tie the game and his neck squeeze will be what gets remembered, but it would have never happened if not for the brilliant shot making of Nesmith, who was 8-of-9 from beyond the arc, putting up 30 points in what he deemed the best game of his career. 

“This one’s at the top,” Nesmith told CBS Sports. “Since I’ve been in the NBA, I’ve never had a game like this. I don’t even know if I’ve ever made eight 3s in a game.”

Nesmith carried Indiana to a comeback without precedence in the modern era. The Pacers scored 23 points in the final 3:14 of regulation, a record since at least 1997. The nine-point deficit that Indiana overcame in the final minute was also a first in the past 27 years (since play-by-play data was charted), if not longer. And in the past 27 years (at least), no team until Wednesday night had won ANY game when losing by 14 or more with 2:50 or under left on the clock. 

Indiana did it. It outscored New York 20-6 to end regulation and found an escape hatch in overtime. The damndest thing is New York got up 108-92 with 7:22 to go to cap a 14-0 run — and did so with Brunson on the bench for the entire span.

“We were very much teetering on the edge,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. 

Somehow, for the third time this postseason, Indiana came back in the final 50 seconds after trailing by seven points or more. The odds of this are infinitesimal and yet somehow this team has found a knack for breaking any probability chart that can be conjured.

“Aaron’s heroics are, I mean, I hope they talked about it,” Haliburton said at his postgame presser. “They can’t be talked about enough.”

He added: “Each shot that he made just kept giving us more confidence that we could really win this game. To do what he did today, while also having to guard Jalen Brunson for, probably 30 minutes, is very difficult to do.”

Nesmith’s lava-like explosion in the final few minutes is the reason why Indiana is up 1-0 instead of other way around. He reeled off six triples like they were layups in the final five minutes (an NBA playoff record) and sent the Garden crowd into a daze of disbelief. 

“It’s probably the best feeling in the world,” Nesmith said of his flow state that flipped the game. “I love it when that basket feels like an ocean, and anything you toss up, you feel like it’s going to go in.”

Nesmith said wasn’t even registering what was happening in real time. And after the game, it was hard for him to recall specific 3s that chipped away at the lead on consecutive possessions. 

“Kind of a blur,” he said. “It’s just so much fun.”

Even as he whittled away New York’s lead, it still felt like the Knicks would eke it out.  I’ve been in this building for a lot of incredible college basketball moments, but this one was distinct. It was a different kind of shock. It was that special Knicks dread that found its way into the room after more than two hours of confident basketball and jubilant fans tricked into thinking this year should see this team fated to its first Finals appearance in more than a quarter-century. 

But the Pacers wouldn’t die. Then Haliburton hit one of the most memorable one-bounce buzzer-beaters in basketball history. Afterward, he was quick with a story about how there were a lot of shots late in games in his early days with the Pacers that didn’t fall. Those losses built him into a player who has confidence now to take any shot, anywhere, against any team.

“When I got traded here we weren’t very good, and so we would be in these moments where I would have to take these shots, and I would miss them, and nobody would care,” Haliburton said. “We weren’t very good, so it didn’t matter. We weren’t a playoff team or anything. So I feel like that kind of like baptism by fire, almost to do that, and then now be in these situations where obviously they matter on such a bigger scale, I think is important for me.”

As for his choke gesture, Haliburton guesstimates he’s watched the “Winning Time” 30 for 30 doc 50 times before. And he knows that, despite Miller doing it to Spike Lee more than 30 years ago, Indiana did not wind up beating the Knicks in 1994. 

“So, I would not like to repeat that,” he said.

That Pacers team didn’t have the collective shooting nor the celestial capability of overcoming almost any conceivable deficit the way this one does. Indiana is doing the things that special teams do in special seasons. Even when you see it, it’s hard to comprehend. But that really did happen on Wednesday night inside the World’s Most Famous Arena, and such a shock it was, we’re left to wonder not just how Indiana follows it up, but how does New York find a way to ignore the stun and recalibrate on Friday night?

“We’re not going to get too excited about this,” Carlisle said. “We’ve got things to clean up. They got things to clean up. Game 2 is going to be another war.”

Let’s hope so. For as ferocious as some of the eight previous Pacers-Knicks playoff series have been, maybe this one can be the best of them all. A history-making Game 1 is exactly how you get there.