Sundays are for the KATs

Good morning. Karl-Anthony Towns had a fourth quarter for the ages to lead the Knicks back against the Pacers and make the series interesting. Plus: All-NBA voters possibly saved the Grizzlies from themselves. Let's basketball.

The Pacers technically led the Knicks by 20 points in this game, but just for a single possession. Indiana locked the hell in on defense in the second quarter and started turning New York over, and that snowballed into the Pacers pulling together a brief, big lead.

Within minutes New York was slowly recovering. By halftime the Knicks had the deficit to a manageable 13, and in the third they got it as low as eight. The problem for New York was less that they trailed – we've seen the Knicks come back repeatedly in this postseason – and more that key figures were in foul trouble and others were ice cold. We saw legitimate minutes from Delon Wright (rightfully usurping Cam Payne as Jalen Brunson's primary back-up) and Landry Shamet. Brunson was in Aaron Nesmith's personal torture chamber and had four fouls in the first half, Karl-Anthony Towns had as many points as personal fouls through three quarters, even Deuce McBride had three fouls in 82 seconds of play in the first half.

O.G. Anunoby was by far the Knicks' best player through three quarters, disrupting as much as possible on defense while putting up points. Mikal Bridges (ice cold in the first half) got clicking in the third, and McBride stopped hacking long enough to have a spurt.

And then came the fourth.

How would you predict a fourth quarter would go for Karl-Anthony Towns in a must-win playoff game on the road where he enters the frame with four points on the game and four fouls and has to face Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner and when he's briefly fortunate Tony Bradley (no offense to Tony Bradley) and the refs are trying to get in as many tweets as possible on their whistles before the warranty expires and his team has relatively little other offense going and he's facing a rather mean crowd and Twitter fingerz everywhere are assembling as if a cat-shaped bat signal (a KAT signal, if you will) lit the sky to alert the haters of a potential bonanza of material was in the offing? What would KAT do in these circumstances?

Take the damn game, of course.