Knicks fans inside, outside Madison Square Garden stunned by Game 1 collapse

New York Times

22-05-2025

NEW YORK — The silence inside Madison Square Garden was inescapable.
It will endure as long as this night haunts the New York Knicks and their battered fan base. Thousands of people all in one place, under one roof, barely able to utter a word. It was a wake in real time for a loss that felt so unexpected and so painful it could only be met by that ineffable feeling of a broken heart, tongues tied by fatigue and incredulity.
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The stairways and escalators of MSG, often a vibrant afterparty following wins, were quiet, too. They are as good a barometer of the franchise as any record, or any check-in on the standings. When the Knicks win, there is pure joy, some untoward words, and a waft of weed. Wednesday night, there was nothing more than a few loose words tumbling out of pursed lips.
What is it like to see some 20,000 fans nearly catatonic, all in some state of shock? It looked a lot like this. It looked a lot like the world's most dour arena, beset by the kind of depression only high-stakes playoff basketball can invoke. Even decades of pain couldn't prepare them for this. A psyche callused over time by dreadful seasons and extinguished hope can still hurt.
The Knicks lost Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals 138-135 to the Indiana Pacers in overtime Wednesday night. That is a somber reading of the facts. It will go down as one of the most agonizing losses in New York sports history, a soul-snatching defeat that will evoke nothing but cursing and drinking around these parts from here on out. It was a night in which Aaron Nesmith etched his name among those who will forever be unforgettably despised in franchise lore, and Tyrese Haliburton made his case to be added as Knicks villain forevermore.
Everyone outside MSG trying to watch on phones pic.twitter.com/e342NVte11
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) May 22, 2025
Win probability charts cannot do this loss justice. The Knicks were up 15 with 4:55 left. They were up 11 with 2:15 to go. They had a nine-point buffer with 58 seconds on the clock. Still up five with 29.9 seconds and time draining. They were still up by two after the final game-tying prayer was heaved, time expired, the horn blared and the ball hit the back rim and did not go in.
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Knicks fans had prepared for this. They gathered outside MSG, on Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, the ones who could not pay the hundreds or thousands of dollars to get in to see a miracle 25 years in the making. This was their mass, and Jalen Brunson led it from his hardwood pulpit. They chanted 'Knicks in four' as a win seemed assured and started dreaming of an easy sweep. They yelled 'F— Trae Young,' a hymnal for a new generation of supporters. They ignored the police who told them to disperse; this was hardly the time to listen to anyone but the TNT broadcast piping from their phones.
But Aaron Nesmith kept nailing 3s. One after another, and six in all. Twenty points in 275 seconds.
Then came the fall. It came from several feet above the rim, after Haliburton launched his shot right before the buzzer, over a closing 7-foot Mitchell Robinson, off the back rim, up so high it ran even with the top of the shot clock, and down through the basket in a perfect swish.
'I knew it was going in,' Haliburton said. By then, thousands of others had to as well. 'I felt like it got stuck up there. Honestly, when it went in, I felt like my eyes might have been deceiving me in the moment. But it felt good when it left my hand. I thought it was going to go in. The ball felt like it was up there for eternity.'
When it landed, Haliburton stormed around on the court and paid homage to Reggie Miller, broadcasting the game on TNT, by placing his hands around his neck. He thought he had hit a 3-pointer. Review confirmed his toe was on the line. It was a 2, and a disbelieving Garden crowd saw their Knicks head to overtime.
But the Knicks had choked, all right. Overtime confirmed it.
By the time the buzzer sounded again, this time with a loss in hand, the mind boggled with how the Knicks had gotten here. This was not just a defeat, it was a checkpoint on the way to misery.
A double-digit fourth quarter lead, gone. A Game 1 win, lost. Home-court advantage, erased. The vibes, no longer all that immaculate.
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One fan carried his Brunson jersey out onto the street; 'Yo, anybody got a lighter?' he asked.
The Knicks had waited more than two decades to get back to this point, after a generation of despair. Through years of Isiah Thomas and Larry Brown and Phil Jackson; the Starbury era, the Eddy Curry sign-and-trade, and the Kristaps Porziņģis deal.
The franchise has been rejuvenated, but sometimes the numbness can reappear in an instant. The Knicks must figure out how to move on. How to recover. Losses like these are hard to come by and harder to come back from.
The Knicks, after a series of wins from the grave this spring against the Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics, finally met their match. No Pacers game is done until five minutes after it's over. For the third time these playoffs, they won despite being down by multiple possessions in the final minute.
Those were on the way to series wins over the Milwaukee Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers. The Knicks now sit in their place. For 47 minutes, they thought they had the game in hand. A whole city thought it, too.
Instead, it all disappeared so quickly. The deafening roars of the Garden were replaced by nothing in their place. It could be heard out on the concourse and the staircase and on the street, a kind of silence that could not be moved.
— David Ubben and Chris Vannini contributed to this report.
(Photo of Carmelo Anthony: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)