NEW YORK _ Victor Oladipo ascended the ramp from the bus to the floor of Madison Square Garden dressed in a Black Panther costume Wednesday night, recreating the look he broke out for NBA All-Star Weekend last season.
For much of the night, costume or not, the power belonged to Tim Hardaway Jr. With his upper lip still split from the elbow he took two nights earlier and glue holding it together, if Hardaway Jr. resembled a movie character it might have been something from the Rocky series. It was a better look than the group of fans dressed as Knicks reserve Ron Baker.
Hardaway poured in 37 points with a career-high seven 3-point field goals, but it still wasn't enough as the superhero was the one in the costume _ Oladipo coming up big in the final minutes to carry the Pacers to a 107-101 win over the Knicks, who were out-scored 13-4 down the stretch. The Knicks dropped to 2-6 on the season.
With the Knicks down by just two, Bojan Bogdanovic air-balled an open 3-point attempt. But Thaddeus Young saved it to Oladipo in the corner and the Pacers All-Star guard calmly drained the 3-pointer with 21.6 seconds left to secure the win.
It was a season-high point total for any Knicks player this season and most for Hardaway since he scored a career-best 39 last season. He became the first Knick to score at least 24 points in seven of the team's first eight games since Patrick Ewing in 1990-91 (when Ewing did it in all eight games).
"It started in the summer," Knicks coach David Fizdale explained Tuesday. "His commitment to the conditioning, his commitment to improving in the areas that I saw could take him to another level, a lot of them not being technical things. He's really been a consistent leader, consistent effort guy every day here in practice, I'm not surprised it's happening for him in a game."
Hardaway has inherited, at least temporarily the role as the Knicks primary offensive weapon with Kristaps Porzingis sidelined for an indefinite period as he continues to rehab from February's torn anterior cruciate ligament.
The Knicks needed it to try to counter Oladipo, who finished with 24 points, as well as the performance off the bench from Domantas Sabonis, who hit his first 12 shots from the field before Frank Ntilikina blocked a shot in the lane in the fourth quarter. Sabonis finished with 30 points before fouling out with 1:17 remaining.
The Knicks took a four-point lead into the fourth quarter, but Indiana quickly ran off six straight points to take an 83-81 advantage. New York was clinging to a 95-94 lead when Hardaway converted a jumper with 3:08 to play, giving him 35 points on the night. Sabonis countered with a pair of free throws and Oladipo then stripped Hardaway and went the distance for an uncontested layup and the lead with 2:43 remaining. A missed 3 by Lance Thomas and a Thaddeus Young layup stretched the Indiana lead to 100-97 with 1:55 left.
Hardaway misfired from there and Oladipo delivered again, hitting a 3-point field goal to stretch the lead to six with 1:23 left. Hardaway hit a pair from the line and after an Oladipo miss Allonzo Trier hit an acrobatic layup to close the gap to 103-101 with 44 seconds remaining.
Hardaway scored his points efficiently on this night, needing just 19 field goal attempts to do it. But he had just one assist after handing out eight Monday night against Brooklyn.
"He's not going to be perfect every game," Fizdale said. "He's going to have games where he's going to look back and say, 'Man, I shot shots I shouldn't have shot.' The first part is always recognizing that. He did that early, the first time we played Brooklyn. (Caris) LeVert scored the basket on him and he said, 'I took too many shots.' He owned it. So he gets into the film, he watches it, he looks for where he could have got somebody else a look and then he tries to apply it to the next game. That's developing."
