Obi Toppins all-too-familiar dunks helped bury Knicks during Game 1 collapse

Obi Toppin once dreamed of making timely plays leading to playoff victories at Madison Square Garden, and the former Knicks lottery pick accomplished that Wednesday night against his first NBA team.Tyrese Haliburton and sharpshooting Aaron Nesmith generated all the headlines, but Toppin registered two key dunks in overtime of the Pacers’ historic 138-135 comeback victory in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.Toppin, the eighth overall pick by the Knicks in the 2020 NBA Draft out of Dayton, posted eight points and 10 rebounds in 20 minutes to fall just shy of his first career postseason double-double.The Brooklyn native made up for a wide-open missed dunk in the first half of the series opener, with a put-back slam following a missed 3-point attempt by Haliburton to give the Pacers a one-point lead with 54 seconds left in the extra session.“Just being in the right place at the right time,” Toppin said after the game.“We know if we win the rebounding battle against the Knicks we’ll be in good position to win.

So I just try to crash and grab every rebound.”Toppin also extended the Indiana cushion to three with another flush with 14 seconds on the clock for the final points of the game, capping the Pacers’ comeback from 14 points down with under three minutes to play in regulation.Jalen Brunson lamented after the game that the Knicks “should have fouled” Toppin instead allowing that uncontested dunk.The win, which also featured a game-tying jumper by Haliburton to end the fourth quarter, marked Indiana’s third comeback win of these playoffs after trailing by seven or more with no more than 50 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter or overtime.NBA teams are now 4-for-1,702 under those parameters in playoff history, and the Pacers have done it once in each round this spring against the Bucks, the Cavaliers and the Knicks.“Unprecedented for other teams.

But for us, we’re just going to keep playing until the buzzer, the last whistle and that...