The New York Knicks were on their deathbed midway through the second quarter in Game 3 against the Indiana Pacers in the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals. The Pacers raced out to a 20-point lead on their home floor while already holding a 2-0 series lead from their dramatic wins in New York. No team in NBA history has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit.
Somehow, the Knicks dug deep and pulled out a win. New York defeated the Pacers, 106-100, to get the series to 2-1 and give themselves a chance to tie it up in Game 4. It’s is the third 20+ point comeback of these playoffs for the Knicks after they had previously erased huge deficits in Game 1 and Game 2 of their second round series against the Boston Celtics, and it gives their championship dreams new life.
The Knicks can thank Karl-Anthony Towns for saving their season. After scoring only four points in the first three quarters, KAT exploded for 20 points in the fourth quarter to give a dire Knicks offense the boost it needed. This is the player New York was hoping for when it swung a bold trade for Towns the day before training camp opened, in the process taking on his massive contract averaging $55 million per season. Watch KAT’s Game 3 highlights here.
Towns’ electric shot-making and rare ability to put the ball on the floor and create his own offense for a player his size immediately stands out from rewatching his fourth quarter buckets. Something else also stands out: for most of the final quarter, Jalen Brunson wasn’t on the floor with him.
Brunson and Towns are the Knicks’ two best players, a pair of offensive supernovas who can takeover a game as scorers at a moment’s notice. They are also both bad defenders, and the Knicks are learning that it’s hard to get enough stops to win with both of them playing together.
One of the big storylines of this series has been how poorly the Knicks’ starting lineup is performing, at -20 for the conference finals and -41 overall for the playoffs. The real problem with that lineup is it features Brunson and Towns together. Towns and Brunson are -20 in their minutes together in the conference finals, and -9 in 412 minutes together in these playoffs.
Remove one of them, and the Knicks suddenly start winning their minutes. With Brunson on and Towns off, the Knicks have a +9.17 net-rating in the playoffs. With Towns on and Brunson off, New York is +9.14 per 100 possessions, via PBP Stats. The Knicks allow a 119.47 defensive rating (that’s points allowed per 100 possessions) with Towns and Brunson on during the playoffs. That number falls to 113.08 when Towns goes to the bench, and it falls to 98.2 when Brunson goes to the pine.
My favorite NBA all-in-one stat is EPM, or estimated plus-minus, via DunksAndThrees.com. That metric has Brunson rated as the best offensive player in the playoffs at +4.8 overall, while also being the worst defensive player in the playoffs at -3.6.
Brunson, who was named 2025 NBA Clutch Player of the Year, only played 2:46 in the fourth quarter of Game 3. Towns was on the floor for 11:24 of the 12-minute period.
Brunson had four fouls in the first half. Towns also ended the game with five fouls. It’s hard to defend when you’re in foul trouble, but just being in foul trouble in the first place is often a sign of shaky individual defense. The entire world knows Brunson and Towns are poor defensive players. The Knicks work a lot better when there’s only one player for opposing teams to target, and the rest of the lineup if filled out by tougher defenders.
Knicks fans are on it:
I think we need to see a lot more Brunson/Towns staggering in game four and beyond. I don’t care what this says about their long-term future together. You have to win 7 more games and keeping two bad defenders off the floor as much as possible will help.
— DJ Zullo (@DJAceNBA) May 26, 2025
Thibs has got to stagger the Brunson/Towns minutes for the rest of the series
— Young Uncle Phil (@ChiefIke) May 26, 2025
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau has caught a lot of criticism during this series, but he also has a tough job. Thibodeau’s two best players are borderline unplayable together because they are both so bad defensively. Thibodeau also doesn’t have much depth on this roster, so his options for subbing one of them out are limited. In Game 3, Delon Wright played 13 minutes and Landry Shamet played 11 minutes after barely seeing the floor all series. The Knicks were desperate in searching for answers, and they might have stumbled onto one that works even if it’s awkward for their future.
Towns and Brunson can’t play together … at least in this series. It’s still possible they could survive in a different matchup, but they were -11 for the series against Boston despite the Knicks’ six-game victory. The Knicks have new lease on life in the 2025 NBA Playoffs, but in the process they’ve given themselves harder questions to answer on how to build their roster in the future.
