Honestly, if you told me back in October that we’d be watching the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks battle it out for a trip to the Finals, I would’ve asked to see your betting slip. Nobody had this on their radar. Most experts were pencil-shaving a Celtics vs. Cavaliers rematch. Instead, we got a six-game war that felt like a 90s throwback, complete with floor burns and a massive helping of "Wait, they actually won?"
Why the Eastern Conference Finals 2025 felt different
The series was essentially a clash of identities. You had the Knicks, who finally looked like the powerhouse Manhattan has been begging for since the Ewing era. Jalen Brunson was playing out of his mind, and the addition of Karl-Anthony Towns (KAT) gave them a spacing threat they’ve never really had. On the other side? The Pacers. Basically a track team in sneakers. They didn't care about your defensive rating. They just wanted to score 130 points and go home.
Most people assume the top seeds just coast, but this series proved that momentum is a hell of a drug. The Pacers came in as the #4 seed. They had already embarrassed the Bucks and stunned the #1 seed Cavaliers. By the time they hit the Eastern Conference Finals 2025, they weren't just happy to be there. They were hunting.
Game 1: The overtime heartbreaker
Game 1 set the tone. It was a 138–135 overtime thriller that basically blew the roof off Madison Square Garden, even if the result wasn't what the home crowd wanted. The Pacers were down 14 points with less than three minutes left in regulation. Statistically? They were dead.
Then Tyrese Haliburton decided to stop passing for a second.
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Indiana clawed back with a flurry of transition threes and some uncharacteristic Knicks turnovers. It was the first time in the play-by-play era that a team came back from 14 down that late in a playoff game. It felt like a glitch in the matrix. The Pacers took that momentum and ran with it, snatching Game 2 on the road as well. Suddenly, New York was staring down a 2-0 hole before the series even touched Indiana soil.
The Siakam vs. Haliburton MVP debate
When the dust settled and Indiana clinched the series 4-2, the league handed out the Larry Bird Trophy for the Eastern Conference Finals 2025 MVP. And man, did that spark some group chat wars. Pascal Siakam won the award, but it was a 5-to-4 split in the voting.
Siakam was the steady hand. He averaged 24.8 points per game and shot over 52% from the floor. He was the one calming things down when the Garden got too loud. But Haliburton? He was the engine. He put up 10.5 assists per game and only turned the ball over 10 times the entire series. That’s a 6-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio in the highest-stakes games of his life.
- Pascal Siakam: 24.8 PPG, 5.0 RPG, 3.5 APG
- Tyrese Haliburton: 21.0 PPG, 10.5 APG, 6.0 RPG, 2.5 SPG
The "what most people get wrong" part is the idea that Siakam "carried" them. In reality, it was Haliburton’s gravity that allowed Siakam to live in the mid-range. Without Hali’s playmaking—which was the best we've seen in an ECF since Magic Johnson in '91—the Knicks' defense would have swarmed Pascal.
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The Knicks' "What If" moment
You have to feel for New York. Jalen Brunson averaged nearly 30 points for the postseason, and KAT was a double-double machine, putting up 24.8 points and 12.2 rebounds in this series alone. They had the talent. They had the home court.
So, what happened?
Defense. Or a lack of it. The Pacers’ pace wore them out. By Game 6, the Knicks' legs looked like lead. Indiana's bench, led by T.J. McConnell and Bennedict Mathurin, outscored the Knicks' reserves by a margin that was honestly kind of embarrassing. You can't win a conference final if your starters are playing 44 minutes because you don't trust your second unit.
The fallout of the Eastern Conference Finals 2025
Indiana's win wasn't just a fluke; it was a shift in the hierarchy. They proved that a "small market" team with no luxury tax bill could take down the giants of the East. Of course, the high of winning the ECF was met with a brutal reality check in the Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder—especially with Haliburton’s tragic Achilles injury in Game 7 of that series—but that doesn't diminish what they did in May.
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The Knicks, meanwhile, are left with a blueprint that works but needs a deeper bench. They have the stars. They have the "clutch" factor in Brunson. But they ran out of gas.
If you're looking to understand why the Eastern Conference landscape looks the way it does now, you have to look back at these six games. It was the moment the "new guard" of the East—Haliburton, Mathurin, Nembhard—officially arrived.
Actionable Insights for NBA Fans:
- Watch the Bench: The Pacers’ depth was their secret weapon. In future playoffs, don't just look at the Top 3 players; look at the 7th and 8th men.
- Pace Matters: Efficiency is great, but a high-possession game can break even the best defensive structures by sheer exhaustion.
- The Power of the Mid-Season Trade: The Siakam trade was what turned Indiana from a "fun story" into a championship contender. Never count out a team that makes a bold move in January.