The Athletic has live coverage of Pacers vs. Knicks Game 2 from the 2025 NBA Eastern Conference finals.

NEW YORK — The sloppiest play of a historic collapse did not even lead to disaster. All it did was display the New York Knicks’ most troublesome traits.

A team that had battled to the Eastern Conference finals — one that ended a first-round playoff series on a franchise-altering dagger from Jalen Brunson, then downed the defending champs with double-digit comebacks aplenty — could not inbound the basketball.

With 12.4 seconds to go in regulation Wednesday night, Indiana Pacers firecracker Aaron Nesmith drained the second of two free throws to narrow the Knicks’ lead, which had been 14 only two-and-a-half minutes earlier, to one point. That’s when New York forgot how to operate.

Josh Hart took the ball out of the net and looked for a quick pass to his point guard, as he often does after makes. The 30-year-old’s constant energy extends beyond just chasing after loose balls. Hart believes in pushing pace, especially when he knows a full-court press is coming, as it had from Indiana for the previous 47 minutes, 48 seconds of Game 1. No doubt, the strategy would continue during such a close finish with so little time to go, when the Pacers needed either a steal or foul.

Brunson streaked down the baseline with two defenders draping him. Yet, the rest of the team did not follow.

Mitchell Robinson, not known for his ball skills, sprinted in the other direction, as he should have. Karl-Anthony Towns jogged from the low block with his back to Hart, then turned around too late. As long as the Knicks didn’t give the ball away, the Pacers were bound to foul someone, and Towns, who wasn’t even the center in this lineup, is a dead-on free-throw shooter. But he wasn’t ready to receive a pass. OG Anunoby, who was beyond the 3-point arc during Nesmith’s free throws, stood pinned in the same place by scrawny All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton.

On a night when everyone, including Hart and Brunson, contributed to the meltdown, at least those two understood this moment.

Hart motioned for any teammate to return but no one was there. He flicked a frantic pass to Brunson, who lucked out after the Pacers trapped him in the corner. As Brunson drifted out of bounds, the two-time All-Star tried to fire a bullet off Nesmith but missed and watched a Baltimore chop trickle into the hands of Anunoby, whom the Pacers fouled.

If you are a Knicks or Pacers fan, it would take a brutal blow to the head to forget the rest. Anunoby made only one of two free throws. Haliburton followed with a toe-on-the-line fadeaway that propelled off the back of the rim and into the sky before the basketball gods kissed into the hoop, tying the game at the buzzer, and the Pacers won in overtime, 138-135.

The Knicks committed five turnovers over the final five-and-a-half minutes of the game. Brunson threw away a reckless dish to Anunoby inside the last 30 seconds of regulation. He gave the ball up a couple more times in overtime. The offense bogged down once Indiana started trapping him aggressively down the stretch.

Mikal Bridges vanished. The Pacers’ speed and talent overwhelmed the Knicks, who acted as if a 1-0 series lead was a guarantee.

Nesmith scored 17 points, including five 3-point makes, in the final 194 seconds of regulation. Towns lingered too far back while guarding screens, giving the Pacers’ sharpshooter too much space. Anunoby committed the same sin. Hart lost Nesmith on another jumper. On another, Towns stopped before even making contact with a pick, failing to move his feet and sticking out a gratuitous hand barely above his hip while still far from Nesmith. He may as well have turned his palm to the sky and announced, as if he were Nesmith’s butler, “Here are your three points, sir.”

A game after the greatest performance of their season, a 38-point decimation of the Boston Celtics to move onto their first conference finals in 25 years, the Knicks took a lead and then stopped playing with any sort of intensity.

But this was not new. In fact, this is their identity. Whether in victory or defeat, the Knicks too often require a kick in the behind — even during the regular season, when they struggled against elite competition.

They have repeated the same plea throughout the playoffs.

“We have to play 48 minutes,” they say.

Head coach Tom Thibodeau drops the line after most games. Brunson, too. Towns has said it, as has Hart.

Often, the trend happens in reverse from how it did Wednesday. The Knicks, as they did three times against the Celtics, will fall into deep holes, recognize they have to ratchet up the intensity and then scrap their way back. Their postseason run has been a string of living through wake-up calls, then answering wake-up calls, then hitting snooze buttons and then repeating the same process.

After a couple of improbable comebacks in Boston to begin the Eastern Conference semifinals, they stopped communicating on defense in Game 3, running their pick-and-roll coverages improperly and absorbing a 22-point fist to the mouth.

They wrecked the Celtics during the second half of the next game, the same match that ended in All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury. With a chance to squash the series two days later, they showed up complacent in Boston and lost by 25. Various people with the Knicks said leading into that night they didn’t have a good feeling about what was to come. The day after the loss, the players gathered at the practice facility for an emergency meeting.

The Knicks didn’t meet the moment, didn’t communicate once again, didn’t play with enough urgency and didn’t prepare for Game 5 seriously enough. And they shared as much that day.

They remedied their issues during the Game 6 drubbing of Boston and were competitive for most of Game 1 against Indiana … until they weren’t.

Perhaps Wednesday’s array of mishaps will sound another alarm. The cycle that’s churned since the beginning of the season could continue.

The Knicks could return to Madison Square Garden on Friday with a renewed dedication to detail. Brunson could handle crunchtime like the Clutch Player of the Year, not like a turnover-fiend. Defensive communication could rise again. Urgency could pick up. Players could hit their free throws, which Anunoby and Towns did not do down the stretch. They could remember the simple assignments, like returning to the backcourt for an inbounds play that could derail their season if gone wrong.

Of course, even if the Knicks become the 1996 Chicago Bulls for a night, the trend could reset — because sometimes the Knicks look like champs, and sometimes they forget what champs look like.

(Photo of Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart: Jesse D. Garrabrant /NBAE via Getty Images)