Good morning. Let’s basketball.

In the Forest; Nadezsa Petrovic; 1900

Score

Pacers 121, Knicks 130 (NYK leads 2-0) — So what happens when Indiana plays their game? Tyrese Haliburton has big numbers (an efficient 34-9)? The Pacers don’t turn the ball over, they get offensive rebounds, they score a ton of points?

What happens when Indiana plays their game, which includes a dose of bad defense?

When that happens, the Knicks score 130 points in 92 possessions, that’s what.

This is with Jalen Brunson sitting the entire second quarter as the team’s medical staff worked on his right foot. It seemed for a while as if he wouldn’t play after the first quarter.

In that first half, the Knicks were +7 in Brunson’s 8.5 minutes and -17 in the other 15.5 minutes. New York trailed by 10 at halftime. The Knicks were dead in the water without Brunson in addition to their other absences (plus the fact that they’d lose O.G. Anunoby to a hamstring injury in the second half).

Brunson came back … and played the entire second half. He dropped 24 in the second half. The Knicks were +19. Another incredible performance.

Josh Hart played all 48 again. Rick Carlisle went nine deep again. Much is being made of Carlisle’s decision to pull the very effective T.J. McConnell in the fourth quarter to re-insert Haliburton. My take is that McConnell is definitely worth having on the floor, but you needed Haliburton’s offense. That’s the Pacers’ identity: Hali is a fantastic creator and tone-setter, and no combination of Pacers was going to turn off the Knicks’ spigot. So why not play McConnell and Haliburton together (as Carlisle already had for a few successful or neutral stretches), pull Andrew Nembhard (who is a nice player being shredded by Brunson) and put two on the ball whenever Brunson touches it, especially with Anunoby out? Josh Hart, Deuce McBride and especially Donte DiVincenzo may very well burn you. Jalen Brunson, on this heater of heaters, will definitely burn you. Make the other guys do it, and trust in Pascal Siakam, Aaron Nesmith and Myles Turner in recovery. The idea that Carlisle would pull his best offensive performer and top player overall in this situation is absurd on its face.

Carlisle got ejected in the final minute and went on a monologue in his press availability.

The craziest thing here is that Carlisle closes (after a question) with:

“Small market teams deserve an equal shot, they deserve a fair shot no matter where they’re playing.”

This is professional victimhood. The Knicks are super physical. The Pacers played physical, too. They are just not built the same way, and their defense has been mediocre all season long. It’s not like there was some crazy free throw differential, either: Indiana had more until the final minute when the Pacers started intentionally fouling and picking up techs.

The Knicks have the best player in the series, and have been able to punish the Pacers at a level that the Pacers have been unable to punish the Knicks. This isn’t about any sort of league conspiracy or bias toward New York. Maybe there’s a real innate home crowd bias that will be reversed when these teams reconvene in a feral Indianapolis.

Giving up 130 points to the Knicks and then pulling the “small market teams deserve a fair shot” is stolen valor from the small market teams that have actually had a case. It’s especially absurd as teams from Minneapolis and Oklahoma City sit undefeated in the playoffs thanks in large part to the fact that they play defense. It’s a ridiculous claim and I hope Carlisle regrets it.

That said, Brunson had one of the more egregious flops of the postseason and he deserves to get a bad whistle for a few possessions of Game 3 as punishment.

Meanwhile, the Madison Square Garden crowd closes the game chanting “F—k you, Reggie” at Reggie Miller, who TNT made a big show of broadcasting this game with Brian Anderson and Stan Van Gundy 30 years after his infamous conquest of New York. Josh Hart wanted to make sure that Reggie and, by extension, we knew what the crowd was going on about.

Incredible television.

Schedule

All times Eastern.

Cavaliers at Celtics, 7, ESPN (BOS leads 1-0)

Mavericks at Thunder, 9:30, ESPN (OKC leads 1-0)

Links

Nikola Jokic is the NBA MVP for a third time in four years.

The Nuggets put together a lovely video narrated by his wife.

He’s the ninth player ever with three or more MVPs. He joins Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and LeBron James as players who won it three times in no more than four years. We are firmly in the Jokic era. He could quite possibly win three more. He is utterly dominant. This series he’s locked in with the Timberwolves might change the narrative enough to prevent him from being a preseason MVP favorite next year. But it’s his time, all the time.

The race for second was relatively close: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander got it over Luka Doncic on the strength of 11 more first-place votes and 10 more second-place votes. Shai was, like Jokic, on every ballot. One voter left Luka off entirely. This is Shai’s second straight top-5 finish. It’s Luka’s highest finish ever, his third top-5 finish in six NBA seasons and his fifth straight top-8 MVP finish. Giannis Antetokounmpo finished fourth (making 73 of 99 ballots, with a single first-place vote) and Jalen Brunson finished a comfortable fifth (66 of 99 ballots, including three second-place votes). Other receiving votes: Jayson Tatum, Anthony Edwards, Kevin Durant and … Domantas Sabonis.

Here’s Tom Haberstroh on Jokic being the recent MVP with the worst supporting cast.

Kelly Dwyer on Indiana’s plight in New York.

This is a couple weeks old, but Will Leitch on what makes a special sporting event special is pretty incredible writing.

If I have one overarching principle of my sportswriting career, it’s that the games aren’t about them—they’re about us. At the end of the day, I don’t really care that much, if I’m being entirely honest, how Corey Seager thinks about the Texas Rangers winning the World Series; I want to know how people who cheered for that team their entire lives up to that point, without ever seeing their team win a title, how they felt when the Texas Rangers won the World Series. Did they cry? Did they scream? Did they call their parents? Were they with their kids? Did they experience it alone, or with a huge crowd? What did they do the rest of the night? Did they cry again? I will listen to these stories forever. This is another reason I’m not interested in sports gambling, why I think sports gambling are oppositional to what sports are supposed to be about in the first place. Sports are emotional. They allow us to express emotions, whether it’s leaping in the air in joy or pounding the couch in frustration, that aren’t so easy to access in real life … and usually not so acceptable to display so demonstratively either.

Marc Stein with updates on the coaching carousel. It’d be pretty hilarious if ESPN/ABC lost two brand new A-team color analysts in a single season … after nearly a decade of surviving Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson rumors, only to lay those two off. Incredible.

And finally: on the road in Oklahoma, four hours from home where his infant daughter surely sleeps soundly, Luka Doncic unwound from a tough Game 1 loss to the Thunder by … reaching a top-500 rank in Overwatch 2. Incredible.

Be excellent to each other.