Can the Pacers exhaust Shai?

It worked on the King of Crunch Time. Next up: The MVP

BY DAVID THORPE and HENRY ABBOTT

The statistics show that the Pacers made Jalen Brunson work far harder on defense; evidently it wore him down as his late-game performance deteriorated. CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Going into the playoffs, Jalen Brunson was the king of crunch time and the Big Apple. He’s an exceptional player and deserves it. But he lost a little sting against the Pacers. It shows up in the video below, and in the statistics. He averaged 2.9 turnovers per 100 possessions of crunch time in the regular season. (He had NO turnovers in crunch time against the Pistons, where the Knicks were plus-27 with Brunson on the floor.)

Against the Pacers, Brunson averaged 13 turnovers per 100 possessions of crunch time.

At TrueHoop we’ve been talking about BlurBall, or the Pacers’ extraordinary intensity, for more than a year. (David might have been the only NBA analyst who listed the Pacers among this season’s contenders at the beginning of the season, and the reason was their intense style of play. In January, he wrote “they just might run a top contender right out of the playoffs.”) They play at a pace and physicality that’s unlike any other team, in Kenny Atkinson and the Cavaliers’ private intensity stats. It can get under your skin and make you want to headbutt somebody.

The Pacers got a ton of praise for how they guarded Brunson. But one of the Pacers told David that by the end of the conference finals, it wasn’t so hard because he had lost his normal burst of speed.

Here’s one tiny glimpse of why he might have been so tired: the Pacers made him burn uncommon amounts of energy on defense.

On defense in the regular season, Brunson evidently found little pockets of rest on defense. He played at the slowest average speed of any Knick, rolling around at just 3.76 miles per hour. The Pacers changed that, making Brunson race around at 4.15 miles an hour when Indiana had the ball. There were 100 reasons Brunson might have been worn out, but that’s one little example that we can see without Coach Atkinson’s secret statistics.

The Pacers’ approach wouldn’t work on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, right? They can’t wear him out? The MVP is a better defender, and perhaps one more used to moving a lot? And he plays on a team that believes in rest and has a deep bench?

Maybe.

But first let me tell you that, surprise! Even though Jalen Brunson may have the slowest average speed of any Knick on defense, the MVP Shai is accustomed to playing even slower than Brunson.

So it’s yet to be seen how Shai will respond to a team that really speeds him up. And, it turns out, there is a trick to get the Thunder to play Shai long minutes …

We asked TrueHoop subscribers to submit Finals questions, which were fantastic and inspired the following conversation.

HENRY: OK, Willy wants to know: who can slow Shai?

DAVID:

What I think is going to happen is