INDIANAPOLIS — This has always been a hell of a city to try to find a playoff basketball win. Back in the day, old Market Square Arena used to shimmy and shake from an hour before tip-off, the P.A. announcer exhorting “Pacer people!” to make matters especially difficult for a visitor.

Market Square Arena was also the last place where Elvis Presley ever performed a concert, back on June 26, 1977, so it had seen some things. The Knicks would come here, take a look around, hear all those sound effects mimicking the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. One time it moved Patrick Ewing to say, “I don’t know that I feel a lot of hate in most cities. But I feel hate here.”

Gainbridge Fieldhouse is a worthy successor, an architectural marvel that tries to incorporate Indiana’s bandbox basketball heritage into a modern NBA facility. It was the perfect setting for a hyper-intense Game 3 on Friday night. Maybe Indy can’t match New York Ben Stiller-for-Chris Rock-for-Spike Lee but Edgerrin James was there, and Roy Hibbert.

And at the end, they weren’t going to allow the Knicks to steal a perfectly steal-able game.

In theory, there should be no carryover. If you look at it from 30,000 feet with a cold, dispassionate set of eyes, the Knicks are 6-3 in these playoffs, and two of those losses — Game 5 against Philly, Game 3 Friday against Indiana — they essentially lost because someone knocked down a 30-foot prayer.

The Knicks are, even diminished, the perfect road team. They are unmoved by hostile environments. They are unaffected by big leads. There was every reason for them to get their doors blown off Friday, and instead the prevailing sense when it was over was they’d let something besides a nine-point fourth quarter lead slip away from them.

Here, too, they are also not a team to dwell, which serves as a terrific antidote to the road. After Tyrese Maxey tried to break their spirits in Game 5 of Round 1, the Knicks simply took it to the Sixers at Wells Fargo Center. And now, having had a day and a half to recover from the Pacers’ 111-106 win in Game 3, they’ll get another crack in the heart of downtown Sunday.

“For us it’s all about mindset,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “We aren’t worried about things we can’t control so we focus on the things we can. Don’t worry about the outside attention, the outside noise.”

It will be noisy Sunday afternoon, there’s no question about that. It will be 17,274 people inside, with only a handful of Knicks fans to lend their voices to the cause.

And the Pacers are on a nice roll at home, too. When they lost here to Cleveland, 108-103, on March 18, it left them with a most pedestrian 21-15 record at home. But that was the most recent time they’ve fallen here. They won five straight to end the season — notably against the Lakers, Thunder and Heat — then took all three games here in the opening series against Milwaukee, then Friday night against the Knicks.

That’s nine straight, and though they certainly looked shaky and vulnerable Friday — and may have a hobbled Tyrese Haliburton leading the charge Sunday — they have found a way to make their home court work for them.

Look, the Knicks still have two home games. They still get Game 7, if it goes that far, which is the reason they worked so hard and ran through the tape in Game 82. They have a cushion.

But we’ve also seen what can happen in these series. Back in the ’90s, in back-to-back years, the Knicks took early 2-0 leads by holding serve at home (’93 against the Bulls ’94 against these Pacers) then let them gain confidence by beating them twice on their home courts, then carrying that momentum to Game 5 at the Garden. The Knicks survived in ’94, in ’93 they did not.

That, as much as anything, is why Game 3 stings. The Knicks had their eyeballs fixed on stealing an unlikely game. They didn’t. They allowed the Pacers to believe they are right back in the series. They shouldn’t be. But if they can win a 10th straight home game Sunday, they will be. And it’ll be down to a best two-of-three.

It’s good that there would be two bookend games at the Garden in that scenario, better that Game 7 would be there. But best of all if that game is never needed. The Knicks can see to that starting Sunday.