Each time Karl-Anthony Towns flexed his left knee he hoped not to feel it, that the hurt would magically go away. A collision with Aaron Nesmith in the final minutes of New York’s Game 4 loss to Indiana left Towns with a deep bruise so painful that hours before Thursday’s elimination game, Tom Thibodeau declared Towns a “game-time decision.” Beating the Pacers with Towns had already proven difficult. Beating them without him would be impossible.

Towns didn’t just play in Game 5. He was brilliant. It was 24 points for Towns in the Knicks’ 111-94 win, along with 13 rebounds and three assists. He bulldozed his way to the basket for buckets, yanked down offensive rebounds, flipped in short jumpers. He made 10 shots. Nine of them came in the paint. Each New York starter finished the game a net positive. Towns was a whopping plus-26.

“In this series I’ve had a lot of success getting downhill, getting to the rim,” Towns said. “I can shoot the three ball but [tonight] I really wanted to get downhill and impose my will early.”

Towns will forever be a lightning rod for criticism, his affable demeanor more Dwight Howard than Kobe Bryant, his passion for three-pointers irking the more bruising big men who came before him. At halftime of Game 3, TNT analyst Shaquille O’Neal blasted Towns’s shot selection. “We’d be fighting in the locker room right now,” said the Diesel. Towns responded by scoring 20 in the fourth quarter of an eventual Knicks win.

There would be no questioning Towns after Game 5. No doubting his fight. Two days of treatment helped ease the pain in that troublesome left knee but when he arrived at Madison Square Garden no one was sure if he was ready to go. Asked what made him believe he could push through, Towns said, “I looked at the game and it said ‘Game 5.’ Do or die.”

Each of the first four games of this series had been competitive, filled with momentum swings. This one was different. There were no lead changes. No late game surge. Even when Indiana made its run late in the third quarter—with Towns on the bench with foul trouble—the Pacers never climbed within single digits. A 17-point win is wide by any standard. In this series, it’s a blowout.

Said Pascal Siakam, “They played harder than us.”

Indeed, there was a different level of force to the Knicks on Thursday. Jalen Brunson was again magnificent, scoring 32 points, nearly half (14) in the first quarter, when New York built a lead it would never give back. Indiana has sent waves of defenders at Brunson this series, with limited effect. Aaron Nesmith has had some success in the first four games. In Game 5, no Pacer did.

“The first quarter,” said Thibodeau, “set the tone for the game.”

For decades, a sturdy defense has been a hallmark of Thibodeau-coached teams, but these Knicks are not built that way. They were a middle of the pack defensive team in the regular season and have been largely the same in the playoffs. But New York has long had the personnel to be better defensively, with long wings like Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby and a reliable rim protector in Mitchell Robinson.

On Thursday, that defense came together. Indiana shot 40.5% from the floor, including 33.3% from three. The Knicks forced 20 turnovers. They ratcheted up the ball pressure. They won the rebounding battle. They held the Pacers to single digits in second-chance points. Tyrese Haliburton cooked New York in Game 4, posting a stat line (32 points, 15 assists, 12 rebounds) never before seen in an NBA playoff game. In Game 5, he had one (eight points, six assists, two rebounds) he would like to never see again.

“Rough night for me,” said Haliburton. “I’ve got to be better.”

This has been a strange series for Haliburton. He was outstanding in Game 1, but shot just 12-for-31 in the next two. He had a breakout performance in Game 4, but was nonexistent in Game 5. The Knicks picked on him a little more on Thursday, forcing him to defend. They blitzed harder, mixed up the coverages and Haliburton has to expect all that will continue when the series shifts back to Indiana.

“Put it on me,” said Haliburton. “I’ll be better in Game 6.”

Haliburton smiled as he walked off the floor on Thursday. “It’s just one game,” he said. Make no mistake, Indiana remains in control of this series. Only 13 teams have come back to win a series they trailed 3–1. For those scoring at home, that’s a success rate of 4.4%. The Knicks burned a lot of energy escaping elimination once. It will take a lot more to do it again.

But there is life in New York. “Why not us?” Towns said, when asked on TNT about the Knicks’ approach before the game. The Knicks have the star power to match Indiana’s and proved in Game 5 that they have a defense capable of containing them, too. Thibodeau’s decision to go deeper into his bench—to Delon Wright, to Landry Shamet, to players he rarely considered playing before—has sparked something.

“One through 15, everyone’s doing an amazing job of wanting to win and being there for each other,” said Towns. “This team’s special.”

It will have the chance to do something special in Indiana. From Brunson to Towns, Shamet to Wright, it will take a complete effort to extend this series again. A packed Garden roared in the closing seconds on Thursday, a Knicks-in-seven chant raining down from the rafters. New York hopes they can give it at least one more chance to do it again.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Knicks Prove They Won’t Be Knocked Down Easily, Force Game 6 vs. Pacers.

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