NBA 2024-25: Pacers/Knicks, Does The Regular Season Matter?

Spoiler alert: yes, it does.

But figuring out the extent to which it does is becoming increasingly difficult. Especially with what's taken place this postseason.

The Knicks' Josh Hart & Jalen Brunson celebrate in the midst of their statement 119-81 victory in Game 6 of the East Semis to eliminate the Boston Celtics.

"The Knicks, despite injuries, battled the Pacers to a tough 7 games in last year's East Semis. Both teams will have to pull off major upsets in the 2nd Round to meet for the second consecutive postseason."

Above are my words from my previous piece on TRB Sports covering these NBA Playoffs. Lo & behold, the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers will once again renew their rivalry following some stunning results in the second round.

Indiana and New York both shocked the world by going up 2-0 on the road vs their 60+ win opponents, the 64-win Cleveland Cavaliers and the 61-win, defending champion Boston Celtics respectively.

Despite many analysts' skepticism on whether the Knicks and Pacers could finish off their series even with their 2-0 leads... each team eventually closed it out. Predictably!

Make that a 5-32 record following the East Conference Semis.

When you combine the East's results with the fact that the West's 6th-seeded Timberwolves have advanced all the way back to the Conference Finals themselves, where they'll face a Thunder team that just survived a 7-game series vs a Nuggets team that canned their longtime head coach a week before the playoffs?

Yeah, it's time to take a look at how much -- in this new NBA world of parity -- the regular season matters in terms of forecasting postseason successes... and failures.

In The Knick Of Time

The New York Knicks went 51-31 in the regular season; 3rd seed in the East and the franchise's most wins in 11 years. They finished as a top-5 offense and just narrowly missed out on finishing as a top-10 defense, ranking 11th.

Good, right? Pretty strong profile on paper. Surely it wouldn't come as a complete shock if this team made it to the Conference Finals.

The thing is that it is truly a complete f--king shock that the Knicks have broken through to the Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years.

Here's the deal. To be considered the best, you've got to beat the best. Or at the very least; merely compete & put up a good fight against the best. The Knicks fell short in that regard during the regular season.

New York, with those 51 wins, finished with the 5th-best record in the entire NBA. 4 teams finished above them -- Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Boston and Houston.

 The Knicks' record against those 4 teams? 1 win and 11 losses -- their only W coming in a 6-pt overtime win in February vs the Rockets at Madison Square Garden.

Versus the three 60-win teams -- OKC, Cleveland and Boston -- the Knicks went a ghastly 0-10. Entering the postseason, each Knick player and coach might as well have worn that 0-10 number like a scarlet letter etched across their foreheads.

The Knicks' loss of center Isaiah Hartenstein to Oklahoma City meant New York was just a step behind the league's top competition until Mitchell Robinson's return.

Their biggest shortcoming may have come versus their second round opponents, the Boston Celtics. The Knicks got swept in 4 games versus the champs in the regular season with some real nasty performances mixed in there.

Remember opening night, where the Celtics tied an NBA record by nailing 29 threes vs the Knicks' defense and turned the 4th quarter into their own All-Star Three-Point Contest? That set the tone for a string of lackluster performances from the Knicks vs the NBA's top competition.

What has become clear in the Knicks' remarkable series win vs Boston 7 months later? They had a joker card lying in wait and were able to play it at the perfect moment.

Enter Mitchell Robinson.

Knicks' Mitchell Robinson played a starring role in New York's stunning second round upset of the champs.

Robinson -- the longest tenured Knick on the roster -- was the highest-graded offensive rebounder in the league in 2022-23 but battled ankle & foot injuries throughout 2023-24. Those injuries intensified during the Knicks' postseason run last year to the point where surgery was needed.

New York took a cautious approach with Robinson this season, holding him out until he was both healthy enough to play and also until his conditioning was at an adequate level to once again become a key playoff contributor.

As a result, Robinson returned on the last day of February and proceeded to play in just 17 games to close the regular season. One of those games came vs Boston in New York's 78th game of the year. And he was very impressive.

In New York's first three meetings vs Boston in the regular season, they went 0-3 with an average loss margin of 21 points -- which might be why the Celtics carried themselves with such a flair of arrogance early on in this series on the way to two consecutive 20-pt leads blown on their home floor...

But, anyway: Robinson didn't play in any of those first three NYK/BOS matchups.

In his lone appearance vs Boston during the regular year, Robinson showed Knicks fans glimpses of his past glory, competing relentlessly on the glass and coming up with a couple of highlight blocks, including one very impressive block on what is usually an 'unblockable' shot -- a deep Jayson Tatum three-pointer on the wing.

The Knicks had put up their best fight vs Boston by far on April 8th -- losing by 2 points in overtime. Knicks fans relented a season sweep at the hands of the team that they were supposed to be built to beat. But using the power of hindsight, there was something ... there in that game.

It was enough to make you believe that with Mitch back in the fold and with everyone else healthy, in a 7-game series... the Knicks could now compete vs the Celtics -- although most acknowledged that it was still very much a long shot to beat them.

As it turned out in the midst of the Knicks' second round triumph vs Boston, Robinson indeed presented significant matchup problems for the Celtics -- problems significant enough that Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla blatantly admitted to turning to the old "Hack-A-Shaq" strategy versus Robinson to force Knicks HC Tom Thibodeau to take him off the floor.

While Robinson had his struggles at the line as a result -- he fired one airball in particular that is my personal choice for the worst free-throw attempt in NBA history -- his enormous impact as a rim protector and offensive rebounder extraordinaire far outweighed a few free-throw misfires. I present this ridiculous defensive sequence in Game 6 that drove the Garden delirious:

Let's put that aforementioned "power of hindsight" to use one more time: the Knicks were largely deemed "frauds" by fans, media, and probably other NBA contenders alike due to their repulsive record vs top teams.

But it has now become clear that it was unfair to slap that tag on New York considering that the bulk of those games were played without one of the most impactful players in the entire Association.

Yes, I said it. If you really know basketball, you know how valuable Mitchell Robinson is & that calling him one of the most impactful players in the league today isn't hyperbole. He's similar to Houston's Steven Adams in the way that both guys can swing entire games with their ability to earn extra possessions for their teammates.

Jalen Brunson is one of the game's most efficient scorers -- he becomes even more dangerous when he's able to get second (and third!) shots due to Robinson's prowess on the offensive boards.

New York's other All-Star, Karl-Anthony Towns, is an incredible offensive talent, but struggled throughout the season at both defending the rim AND defending in drop coverage near the three-point line. Robinson washes away both of KAT's shortcomings when they share the court together -- a new "double-big" dynamic that Coach Thibs and the Knicks could now ride all the way to the NBA Finals.

That is the reality that New York now lives in -- they've gone from "frauds" to championship contenders in the span of 6 games. And New York City now knows it too, as evidenced by the party scene in Midtown Manhattan after the Knicks' 38-point blasting of Boston in the Game 6 clincher.

This brings me to how all of this should teach us how to consume the regular season. Since winning 60+ games clearly doesn't punch you a ticket to the Conference Finals anymore, does that mean the regular season is completely meaningless? No, it doesn't.

What it does signal is this: while complete judgments of teams shouldn't be made on account of their regular season profiles, there are certain moments of foreshadowing that take place during some regular season games that might speak to certain advantages when the playoffs arrive. Robinson's performance in the Celtics/Knicks regular season finale was an example of this.

It's not that simple, though. Personally speaking, this postseason's results through two rounds have had my head spinning. There's so many regular season narratives that have been proven flagrantly wrong with two whole rounds to go. The Cavaliers, in particular, looked outright dominant at times throughout the regular season -- and they got their fair share of wins vs the OKCs and the Celtics of the world too, unlike the Knicks.

You know, it's also become clear that some teams use the regular season as a sort of "test run" where they can work on tweaks and try out new lineup combinations, knowing full well that they can "turn it on" once the playoffs arrive.

By "some teams" -- I definitely mean the Indiana Pacers.

GrieveLand

The Pacers' upset of Cleveland was stunning in how lopsided it was throughout. After a resolute Cavs win in Game 3 of that series behind Donovan Mitchell's 43 points (Mitchell averaged 34.2 PPG in the series), the Pacers destroyed the Cavs in Indiana in Game 4, leading by 41 points (!) at halftime.

Cleveland returned home for Game 5 and attempted to preserve what was left of their pride following that Game 4 beatdown, but couldn't. Indiana won by 9 and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second consecutive year.

From brilliance to bittersweet: Garland, Mitchell and the Cavaliers won a franchise-record 64 games all to suffer a nasty 5-game second round defeat to the East's #4 seed. | PHOTO CREDIT: SUE OGROCKI/AP

Cleveland's collapse from their most prosperous regular season in franchise history to a five-game exit in the second round is appalling, no doubt. But it can at least partly be explained away with the injury excuse.

Their star point guard Darius Garland missed those first two home losses with a badly-injured toe. Evan Mobley and DeAndre Hunter both also missed Game 2 with injury. And Mitchell battled an ankle injury in the final two Cavs' defeats in Games 4 & 5.

So, yes. An ugly way for the 1st-ranked offense and the 8th-best defense to bow out. But it's semi-explicable at the very least.

Plus, Indiana has proven to be a motherf*cker of a matchup in the playoffs the last two years. You'll think you've got them under control, and then? Bang. Death by blitzkrieg. Their high-octane offense truly can detonate at any moment -- a nightmarish reality for their opponents.

After orchestrating an impressive gentleman's sweep of the Cavs, Haliburton will attempt to outduel Jalen Brunson and the Knicks for the right to get to the Finals.

In fact, if you believe the reports: it was a reality that the Cavs fully realized they could face before the postseason even began. ESPN's Brian Windhorst reported this on his 'Hoop Collective' podcast:

"Internally, the Cavs were wary of the Pacers for weeks... Because that's a quasi-bad matchup for the Cavs."

I'm gonna say the line again: Styles make fights. And the Cavs' strong defense in the regular season came with the caveat of all caveats: Garland and Mitchell's ability to guard on the perimeter. Throw in the fact that both small guards were banged up in this series, and that flaw became even more glaring.

Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard attacked the Cavs' suddenly shaky perimeter defense at will. Cleveland's two outstanding defensive bigs, Jarrett Allen and the DPOY, Evan Mobley, who usually provide great backside support, were both pulled out of the paint consistently by Indiana's versatile bigs, Myles Turner and Pascal Siakam.

That "quasi-bad matchup" that Windhorst spoke of turned into a full-on house of horrors for the Cavs in their attempt to defend Indiana and their breakneck offense.

Alas, the Cavs get punked out of the postseason, as do their 60-win twin in Boston. Both teams will have some major questions to answer when it comes to their core players heading into the offseason.

Rivalry Renewed

The Knicks and Pacers will now renew one of the best rivalries in the history of the sport. The two franchises have faced off 8 times in the postseason -- with this year's Conference Finals making it 9.

Mitchell Robinson was one of many rotational Knicks that either couldn't play or played compromised due to injury in last year's Pacers/Knicks series -- they're all healthy entering this series.

After facing off FIVE times in the 90s, Indiana has won all three matchups vs New York this century -- in 2000 (NYK's last trip to the Conference Finals), 2013, and last season's East Semis which ended in a Game 7 boat-racing on the Garden floor... which led to Haliburton breaking out some interesting apparel postgame.

He didn't wear it before the game, though!

NOTES:

The Eastern Conference Finals begin on Wednesday, Game 1 from Madison Square Garden... TNT will be broadcasting the East Finals, meaning that Pacers all-time great and Knicks nemesis Reggie Miller will be serving as color commentary on the broadcast... Miller's 90s rival, Knicks legend Patrick Ewing, serves as basketball ambassador for the Knicks organization and will travel with the team throughout the series.