The key for a Knicks win in Game 6 is to keep anyone on the Pacers from having an outlier game

The Knicks forced a Game 6 in their series with the Pacers, with a 17-point win, the largest margin of victory in the series. The focus has been on a bunch of different reasons why, from the Knicks’ energy all game, getting off to a good start offensively and playing good defense, among others. But what’s been overlooked is how the Pacers need an out-of-nowhere performance from someone to win. It’s happened three times already but did not happen in either Game 3 or Game 5.

Basketball-Reference has a metric called Game Score, devised by John Hollinger, that gives a measure of productivity for a single game. The inputs include points, shots, free throws, rebounds, steals, assists, blocks, fouls and turnovers. It’s scaled to mimic points, so if a Game Score number would be a good points-scored number, you know the player had a good game.

Here are the three big performances the Pacers got in their wins:

G1 – Aaron Nesmith, 25.5
G2 – Pascal Siakam, 30.1
G4 – Tyrese Haliburton, 36.4

We can see that these would be good scoring numbers. But perhaps they don’t stand out enough to make an impression. So, let’s look at what these three players have done the rest of the series, in order from Game 1 to Game 5:

Nesmith – 25.5, 10.4, 6.0, 11.1, -1.7
Siakam – 15.1, 30.1, 11.4, 22.5, 12.2
Haliburton – 26.0, 15.5, 17.6, 36.4, 10.6

In the 12 games besides their monster output, the closest any of these three players have come to their standout game was 7.6 by Siakam. The next closest was a 10.4 by Haliburton. As for Nesmith, his next closest game was 14.4 worse.

Let’s look at it another way. The first number is the outlier and the second number is what the player averaged in the other four contests:

Nesmith: 25.5, 6.5
Siakam: 30.1, 15.3
Haliburton: 36.4, 17.4

For the season, Haliburton averaged an 18.9 Game Score, Siakam averaged a 16.4 and Nesmith averaged an 11.4 Game Score. These playoff performances were massively above what was normal for these players, either in this series or the regular season.

In their loss in Game 3, their top Game Score was Haliburton’s 17.6 and in Game 5 it was the 17.3 of Bennedict Mathurin

Let’s compare those to what the Knicks have received from the four players who have started each game in this series:

OG Anunoby – 9.9, 13.5, 15.2, 15.5, 5.6 and a 14.0 in the regular season
Mikal Bridges – 13.5, 13.3, 7.1, 6.6, 10.4 and a 13.3 in the regular season
Jalen Brunson – 25.5, 27.7, 9.1, 23.5, 26.1 and a 20.8 in the regular season
Karl-Anthony Towns – 31.6, 13.3, 12.5, 19.2, 15.0 and a 20.4 in the regular season

And in case you think one of the other two starters went off for the Knicks, the best Game Score for Josh Hart in this series is a 12.6 and for Mitchell Robinson it was a 9.5 number.

The Knicks have had one outlier performance, which was by Towns in Game 1. Playoff Brunson has been consistent in four of his five games, with one stinker, and the rest have been performing at best slightly above their regular season numbers and mostly beneath what they did then.

Playoff Brunson has 23 times reached a Game Score of 20 as a Knick in the playoffs, with five times eclipsing a mark of 30. He consistently steps up his game in the playoffs. And even in the contest in 2025 with his worst Game Score, Brunson scored 23 points.

The monster games by Nesmith, Siakam and Haliburton happened and the idea here is not to pretend that they didn’t. Instead, it’s an indication that for the Pacers to win a game, they need someone to go off. And even with these outlier performances, they’ve won by a total of 17 points in their wins.

It would be great if the Knicks could get an outlier Game Score performance from Anunoby or Bridges or Hart or Robinson. If they were to get that, they’d probably win by a greater margin than Game 5’s 17 points. But they don’t need for that to happen in order to force a Game 7. Instead, they just need to keep anyone from the Pacers doing a Superman imitation.

Haliburton’s a great player and it’s impossible to begrudge his Game 4 performance. But that’s him playing at the absolute top of his game. We haven’t seen that yet from Brunson. Hopefully we will sometime here in the 2025 playoffs. Still, if we’re to hope for one thing right now, we should wish for all of the players on the Pacers to just have a normal game.