INDIANAPOLIS — Karl-Anthony Towns drifted from his man, cheating off Myles Turner to help on a Tyrese Haliburton drive.
It’s the third quarter of the Knicks’ 132-121 loss to the Pacers, their third defeat in the last four games, and this subtle misstep would trigger a chain reaction: Turner, waiting at the top of the key, received the ball from Haliburton, and with Towns late to contest, Indiana’s noted marksman center drilled a three—a play emblematic of New York’s early-season struggles to defend the three-point line.
It was only Turner’s first attempt from deep of the second half—and his first made triple of the game—but the impact was immediate. His long-distance shot set off a shooting spree as he nailed four more threes, each one exposing lapses in the Knicks’ defensive rotation.
Towns, repeatedly caught either too deep in the paint or failing to close out with urgency, personified New York’s recurring problem: an inability to recognize and adapt to perimeter threats.
“He’s a good player, and we lost track of him as a team,” Jalen Brunson said of Turner after the game. “It’s not one person’s fault or anything. We’ve got to cover for each other.”
Moments after his first made three, Towns lost track of Turner, who lingered just behind the action, trailing a backcourt inbounds pass to Haliburton. Turner casually drifted to the top of the key, where he received the ball with Towns still buried in the paint, pinned by a screen Haliburton had set.
Turner’s three clanked off the rim, but Pascal Siakam knocked the ball off the glass, recovered it, then quickly got it to Bennedict Mathurin. OG Anunoby rotated to cover Mathurin, and Mikal Bridges abandoned Turner to pick up Haliburton.
Meanwhile, Towns lingered in no-man’s land, failing to step up to contest Turner, leaving him wide-open once more. By the time Turner received the pass, Josh Hart—who was guarding Siakam but also the closest Knick to the open shooter—pointed at Turner in confusion as Indiana’s stretch five nailed another triple, his second within 67 seconds of game clock.
“We’ve got to look at the scheme, we got to look at the match up, we got to look at a lot of things,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “And awareness. If we understand that a guy hits a three, the next time down, they’re searching for him. Have that awareness of what’s going on in the game.”
“That was tough, especially that late,” Hart added. “We’ve got to communicate better, got to know our guys’ tendencies better. Obviously that takes time. Communication, it’s going to improve.”
Turner hammered the final nail late in the fourth, capitalizing once again as Towns drifted away, leaving the sharp-shooting big man wide open in the corner. Turner sank the three, stretching the Pacers’ lead to 14 with just under 90 seconds remaining—a dagger from which the Knicks couldn’t recover.
In a flawless closing stretch, Turner went 3-for-3 from deep in the fourth quarter, with each shot landing within the last five-and-a-half minutes, cementing his pivotal role in the Pacers’ decisive victory. He finished with 26 points and made all five of his 3s in the second half.
“He’s a good player. He can shoot the ball. He’s one of those few bigs in this game that can stretch the court with his shooting ability,” Towns said after the game. “There’s some opportunities we gave him that were unfortunate, especially off of daggers, too, and second-chance points. I think those are the ones that really hurt. Great player. You know he’s gonna make some shots. But the ones you can control are the ones you lose sleep over.”
Turner is not the only player who made 3s on Sunday night, and the Pacers aren’t the only team to make 3s against the Knicks.
The Hawks beat the Knicks courtesy of a 15-of-38 shooting night from downtown. In Boston, the Knicks witnessed an historic three-point barrage on opening night, as the reigning champions tied an NBA record with 29 made on 49 attempts—a spectacle dampened only when the Celtics’ third unit missed 12 straight in a late-game bid for the record-breaking 30th.
Against Cleveland on Oct. 28, the Knicks’ perimeter defense faltered again. While the Cavaliers collectively shot a modest 12-of-36, Dean Wade, a career 37% 3-point shooter, went 0-for-5 from deep, with every miss coming on open or late-contested looks, a fact that only underscored the Knicks’ struggle to limit quality three-point opportunities.
And beyond Turner’s hot hand on Sunday, Mathurin torched the Knicks with seven 3s on nine attempts en route to a career-high 38 points. Haliburton delivered his best performance of the season, scoring 35 points with four triples of his own, while Siakam and backup Jarace Walker each added a pair from beyond the arc.
Karl-Anthony Towns sounds alarm after Knicks lose for 3rd time in 4 games: ‘I’m disappointed’
The Pacers shot 21-of-46 from downtown. The Knicks made seven 3s on just 25 attempts.
“Regardless of what’s happening on the offensive end, we can control what we can control — and that’s the defensive side,” Brunson said. “I think offensively, offense is not really the problem. In the fourth quarter being outscored yes, but it really starts with our defense.”
Digging deeper, the numbers paint a picture of the Knicks’ defensive vulnerabilities.
They rank 13th in opponent three-point percentage, allowing teams to shoot 35.3% from beyond the arc. But it’s the volume that’s concerning—Despite playing at the league’s slowest pace, New York is conceding 38.7 attempts per game, the 10th-highest mark in the league, just shy of the league’s worst in Atlanta and seven attempts more than Houston, which leads in this defensive category.
A key issue is the quality of looks New York is conceding: opponents are taking an average of 17.9 “wide-open” threes per game, ranking 12th in this category, but it’s the 16 “open” threes—where a defender is four-to-six feet away—that reveal a crucial gap. Here, the Knicks are among the league’s poorest, ranking fourth-worst, trailing only Sacramento, Golden State, and Indiana.
And despite shooting a strong 39.5% from deep—third in the league behind only Cleveland and Denver—the Knicks are taking only 34.3 threes per game, placing them in the league’s bottom ten in terms of volume. It’s a surprising figure for a team whose trade for Towns signaled a run-and-gun offensive era.
Karl-Anthony Towns continues to make Knicks trade look good against Bucks
Before tipoff, Thibodeau addressed the concept of pace as subjective but emphasized the importance of a balanced offensive approach.
“Everyone tends to say all 3s, and it’s not just all 3s. It’s as many layups as you can get,” he said. “But you want to have a balance. You have to understand the math of the game in terms of, if someone’s making 20 3s, and you’re making 10, it’s gonna be pretty hard to win that game.”
Postgame, however, Thibodeau’s focus shifted sharply to the team’s lackluster defense beyond the arc—a critical issue for a team with championship ambitions.
“We gave up way too much. [If] we don’t challenge shots, they’re going to make,” he said. “Too big of a discrepancy from the three-point line: They made 21, we made 7. That’s a problem. We’ve got to fix it, and we’ve got to fix it fast.”
