The Knicks were down by 20 in the second quarter. Jalen Brunson was in foul trouble. And all but the hardest-core Knicks fans had pretty much accepted that their season would be over in the matter of days.
OK, that's one way to look at it.
The other way is that the Knicks had the Indiana Pacers exactly where they wanted them.
For the third time this postseason, the Knicks came back from 20 points down to win a game they shouldn't have. Their 106-100 victory over the Pacers on Sunday night in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals may have been the most dramatic of them all, given that a loss would have put the Knicks in an 0-3 hole.
Instead, the Knicks have given the Pacers a reason to be nervous. That reason is Karl-Anthony Towns, who had one spectacular quarter when his team needed him most.
After scoring only four points through three quarters, Towns exploded for 20 points in the final 12 minutes to stun what had been a raucous crowd at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Towns dunked, hit three-pointers, knocked down free throws. With Brunson on the bench for a good chunk of the quarter, he did everything the Knicks needed to get their first win of the series.
"The mantra of the team is when someone gets going, you got to try to keep him going," Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of the show Towns was putting on. "It was everyone working together to get open shots for him."
Towns bounced back from a poor Game 2 in which he spent crunch time on the bench. The Knicks had narrowed Indiana's 20-point second-quarter lead to 10 points at the end of three periods, and then Towns took over.
The Knicks entered the game needing a jolt. They needed to do something drastic, something dramatic in an attempt to save their season.
And so Thibodeau rolled the dice before what for all practical purposes was a must-win Game 3. He broke up the starting lineup he had stuck with through thick and thin all season.
Thirty minutes before tipoff, the Knicks announced that Mitchell Robinson would start in place of Josh Hart as the Knicks, down 0-2, tried to pick up their first win of the series.
It was a desperate departure from what the Knicks have done all season, and the Pacers seemed to smell the panic early. Indiana went ahead by 20 points with 3:20 left in the first half before settling for a 58-45 halftime lead. They then built a 16-point lead with 8:02 left in the third quarter.
The Knicks' starting lineup of Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Towns, OG Anunoby and Hart had logged a league-high 940 minutes together in the regular season, far more than any other team in the NBA. The Knicks were widely thought to have one of the most talented starting groups in the league, with their weakness being their thin bench.
Yet the starting group has struggled in the playoffs. In their two losses to the Pacers, the Knicks' starting group was a minus-29. In their first 14 playoff games, they were a minus-50.
Robinson missed the Knicks' first 58 games of the season as he recovered from offseason ankle surgery. When he returned, he usually was a substitute for Towns. It was only very late in the regular season that Thibodeau started playing the two together.
Towns, a five-time All-Star, is good for 20-plus points almost every night. The problem is that Indiana's fast-paced style of play is a nightmare for him because he's not quick, nor does he keep his opponents from attacking the rim despite his size advantage. Robinson, by contrast, is a tenacious rebounder and shot-blocker who also can guard on the perimeter, but he does not produce on offense and is a liability at the free-throw line.
So the quandary for Thibodeau has been this: Does he go with the starting center, who can't defend, or does he stay with Robinson, who can't score? At least at the start of Sunday's game, he picked option none of the above and opened with a twin-tower alignment.
Yet, in the end it was a Knicks starters who were on the floor for most of the fourth quarter when Towns led the comeback.
Said Thibodeau: "It's great to watch him play like that."