The Knicks better win Game 1

Don't chase the Pacers.

The Eastern Conference finals between the Knicks and the Pacers are shaping up to be fantastic. We’re into it here at TrueHoop—because it will be exciting, and because it’s a window into the future of the NBA, where the hardest-playing team wins. You should probably read these two posts before this one:

• The intensity system.

• The Pacers are far better than their record.

Let’s pretend that there’s an amount of regular season minutes that’s ideal–gets you all the royal jelly, court time, and experience with teammates you need to be at your best in the playoffs, but doesn’t beat up your body. Now consider that almost all of the Pacers and almost none of the Knicks fell in the range between 50th and 200th in minutes played leaguewide.

There's another whole big narrative at play in these Eastern Conference finals, which is, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle is committed to playing a lot of guys. He can go small, which he did up until Game 5 against the Cavaliers–then he played Thomas Bryant a good amount, and Thomas was incredible. Even Rick even brought him up afterwards, basically saying he played as good as any backup center could ever play. He had a brilliant few minutes where he got a block, a 3, and whole bunch of stuff, and then he stole the ball and got a dunk.

This all feeds what Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson referred to as the wear-down effect.