The Knicks dug themselves a hole early with their defensive failures and turnovers, and no combination of lineups or late-game heroics could save them from now facing elimination Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.

The Knicks have staged a series of improbable comebacks in the postseason, coming back from 20 points three times. But they've done it on the backs of their star offensive players, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.

But Tuesday they both scored just two points in the fourth quarter as the Knicks tried to fight back -- Towns not scoring until a follow with 4:24 to play and Brunson converting a layup with 16 seconds remaining.

The more troubling thing was that Towns took a blow to his left knee late in the game when he collided with Aaron Nesmith and was on the ground for a long time being tended to by the training staff. But he remained in the game and when asked about it afterward he said: "I'm just focused on this loss. I'm not thinking about that right now."

The Knicks remained with the revamped starting lineup they debuted in Game 3, but found themselves struggling defensively and to find energy at the start of the game and again at the start of the second half. After defensive failures allowed Indiana to score 43 first-quarter points, the Knicks were still up two points late in the first half. But they gave up the final six points of the half and then saw Indiana outscore them 7-0 to start the third quarter to build a double-digit lead.

"There's obviously some good, but also things we have to do a lot better," Tom Thibodeau said. "I don't think we had a good grouping. We started slowly, but I thought there was a stretch in the first half where we settled down and we played well. But then we didn't close the second quarter. Now we come in with a deficit, then we start the third without great energy, and you can't do that. Once it gets to double figures, now they've got more confidence. We gotta make sure we play with the proper approach and intensity and force and be connected."

There was no choke sign from Tyrese Haliburton as he did in Game 1, but that might have been because the Knicks were playing from behind almost all night. But he did have one trolling moment, hitting a three-point field goal over Jalen Brunson and mimicking Brunson's three-point celebration. But he deserved his moment, putting together a 32-point, 15-assist, 12-rebound, four-steal night without a turnover. Mikal Bridges, tasked most of the night with trying to defend him, took the blame.

"I didn't play my best game," Bridges said. "On both ends, let my team down a little bit. But just kept fighting. They came out with more fire."

"Haliburton's a great player," Thibodeau said. "You don't guard great players in this league individually. It's your entire team. And if one guy's not doing their job, everyone is going to look bad. And so there's a combination of things, whether we're talking defensive transition, isolation game, pick and roll game, whatever it might be, it's everyone being tied together and moving in unison and reading the ball correctly and making the right reads. And so he got off to a good start. And it's hard when guys get confidence, great players get confidence early, it's hard to slow them down."