Pacers Hold Off Knicks 106-104 and Our Plus Number Cashes

Pacers 106, Knicks 104. Indiana won outright, so the +8.5 never needed a backdoor or a late miracle to hold. Anyone who grabbed the points got paid, and our published pick on Indiana +8.5 is a HIT.

The reasoning was that the line had moved too far toward New York. Stripping out home court gave us a fair Knicks margin somewhere around 6 to 7.5, even after crediting Indiana's rough home split and New York's recent form. The market pushed the number from 6.5 to 8.5, and that gap was the whole bet. The final score says the market overreacted, at least in this game.

We also labeled this a low-confidence take, and we meant it. The samples are 11 to 12 games, the edge was small, and the steam toward New York was a real warning sign we flagged. A two-point final is exactly the kind of result that could have gone either way on one possession, so some variance clearly helped here. The logic held up, but one game doesn't validate a model.

What the result does say is that this was a game the Pacers were never going to be blown out in, and the underdog number mattered. Treat it as a good process on a thin edge, not a lock. When the steam shows up again, we'll be watching it more closely.