Was a rogue Pacers fan trying to set the Knicks up for failure before they ever hit the court for Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals?
That was perhaps the case after Zach Lowe revealed Monday on his podcast that he had heard a fire alarm had gone off at the Knicks’ hotel in the wee hours of the morning before their 125-108 season-ending loss to the Pacers on Saturday night in Indiana.
“Apparently the night before Game 6 in Indiana, the fire alarm went off at the Knicks’ hotel at about 1 in the morning,” Lowe explained. “There’s some mystery over how that happened. I checked with a couple of agents, who then checked with their players, who then confirmed that, yeah, the fire alarm went off. I think 1 a.m., someone told me 12:45, I don’t think that’s like — a lot of players are probably still awake then. This is kind of a young team.”
There is no confirmed evidence that the incident was intentional.
The Knicks had apparently been staying at the InterContinental Indianapolis ahead of Game 6, which took place at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, and it seems unlikely that the interruption really impacted the Knicks at the end of the day.
The Pacers, led by star Tyrese Haliburton, took the series and will now meet the Thunder in the NBA Finals, while the Knicks’ championship drought reaches 52 years.
The Knicks and Pacers have a longstanding rivalry that had been at its best in the 1990s and has been reinvigorated recently, with the two sides meeting in back-to-back seasons in the playoffs.
It’s not the first time a fire alarm has gone off before a playoff game in recent memory.
Last year, during the Panthers series against the Bruins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a fire alarm had gone off at the Panthers team hotel ahead of Game 6, which Florida won to advance to the conference finals.