Madison Square Garden bubbled in anticipation for a moment like this.
With just over three-and-a-half minutes left in the Knicks’ first-round playoff-opener against the Philadelphia 76ers, two marquee talents matched-up position for position with Game 1 hanging in balance.
With the ball in his hands and a four-point lead, Jalen Brunson sized up Sixers lightning rod Tyrese Maxey at The Garden’s half-court logo.
Brunson then declined a screen set by Mitchell Robinson and got a step on his opponent before pulling up for a mid-range two with Maxey trailing behind him.
The shot put the Knicks up by six. They would go on to win both Game 1, 111-104, and the series, 4-2.
Brunson not only won his matchup against Maxey, and not only out-scored the reigning league MVP Joel Embiid in the series, but he enters the second round leading all playoff scorers in points per game.
And he did it not against Maxey, whose possessions guarding Brunson were fleeting and far-between, but against the very wing defenders — Kelly Oubre Jr. and Nic Batum — 76ers head coach Nick Nurse used instead of his All-Star guard to defend the point of attack.
The Indiana Pacers will do the same.
Tyrese Haliburton is the Pacers’ superstar point guard, the engine fueling Indiana’s postseason run, but rarely did he guard Milwaukee Bucks’ all-world scorer Damian Lillard in their first-round duel.
Instead, Haliburton oftentimes guarded Malik Beasley, a spot-up shooter mostly relegated to the corner for spacing, while Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle deployed a combination of Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and TJ McConnell to defend Lillard, oftentimes the full 94-foot length of the court.
Carlisle used to coach Brunson during his time as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks team that drafted him 33rd overall in the 2018 NBA Draft.
He knows that Haliburton, as elite of an offensive weapon as he’s been for the Pacers this season, is not the best option to guard the head of the Knicks’ snake if the Pacers want a good chance to emerge from the second round.
“We’ve gotta have everybody ready to guard him. He’s been unstoppable in the playoffs,” Carlisle said ahead of tipoff of Game 1 between Brunson’s Knicks and his own Pacers on Monday. “So it’ll be those three guys [Nembhard, Nesmith and McConnell] and probably two or three more that at some point will guard him. We’ll try to get speed, strength, length, any kind of force possible to slow him down, but he’s been phenomenal.”
The Knicks know what kind of challenges Haliburton poses powering Indiana’s offense as well.
The Pacers listed the All-Star guard as questionable due to back spasms ahead of Game 1, but the Sixers, too, played Joel Embiid (meniscus) at limited capacity, only for him to average playoff career-highs of 33 points, 10.8 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 2.2 made threes per game.
Haliburton has been far more of a facilitator than a scorer since a January hamstring injury sidelined him more than a week. He averaged 16 points and 9.3 assists against the Bucks in the first round, converting on just 29.6 percent of an average of nine threes attempted per game.
The Knicks, however, will treat him as if he’s healthy, as they did Embiid, because even a limited player is capable of hanging 50 points to win a playoff game like Embiid did in Game 3.
The Knicks will approach Haliburton similarly to how they approached Maxey: They will throw one of a number of non-Brunson defenders at him.
OG Anunoby, Miles McBride and Josh Hart each took turns guarding Maxey in the first round before Donte DiVincenzo assumed the role of perimeter stopper and held the Sixers’ star guard to just 17 points on 18 shot attempts in the closeout Game 6.
“I think it’s huge,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said of the number of bodies he can throw at an opposing star guard on defense. “I think a steady diet of one guy is sometimes tough. So you wanna give them different looks.”
This playoff series, of course, is not a carbon copy of the last.
The Pacers play to their name. They speed the game up with three guards on the floor at one time and a center in Myles Turner who spreads the floor as a high-volume three-point shooter.
The Pacers also acquired two-time All-Star Pascal Siakam in a mid-January trade with the Toronto Raptors. Siakam led Indiana in scoring in the first round against the Bucks.
“The speed, the three point guards, Tyrese is an offense unto himself, and then you add in Turner the way he can spread you and Siakam off the dribble and in the post and just the different ways that he can score,” Thibodeau said. “You can’t overlook any of the others. Nembhard is really good. Nesmith has had a great year for them. And then their bench is very effective as well.”
Brunson averaged 35.7 points per game against the Pacers in three regular season games this season, and Haliburton had a 22-point, 23-assists game against the Knicks on Dec. 30.
It’s the matchup the basketball world wants to see — one All-Star franchise cornerstone attempting to get the best of another at his position. And it’s the matchup, by virtue of cross-matches and defensive switching, the fans will ultimately get, even if on rare occasion since both coaches will do their best to keep one from guarding the other.
“Yeah you can’t get stuck on individual matchups. It’s about the team. I know it’s popular for fans and stuff, but stay locked into the team,” said Thibodeau. “And that’s what I value so greatly in Jalen; the focus is always the team.”
