NEW YORK — No non-elimination game is an absolute “must-win” situation, but Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was about as close as it gets for the New York Knicks. They lost Game 1 at home on Sunday and their opponent – the Miami Heat – was now missing its best player.

Despite the absence of Jimmy Butler (who sprained his ankle in the fourth quarter of Game 1), it was a bit of a struggle for the Knicks, who trailed by six points with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. But they got what they needed, evening the series with a 111-105 victory at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.

Here are some notes, numbers and film on what was a very different game than the one that preceded it.

1. Brunson and Randle play, play big

Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle were both initially listed as questionable for this game. Randle missed Game 1 with the ankle injury he re-aggravated in the first round, while Brunson’s status (ankle soreness) was a little bit of a surprise. But both of the Knicks’ stars were in the lineup on Tuesday, and they both played well. Brunson led all scorers with 30 points, shooting 6-for-10 from 3-point range after going 0-for-7 from beyond the arc in Game 1. Randle finished with 25 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.

The eight assists were tied for the third most that Randle has had this season, and he was a playmaker from the start. The Heat didn’t seem interested in testing if he could beat guys one-on-one, double-teaming Randle early.

The Heat actually doubled Randle on the very first play of the game, but when he got rid of the ball, RJ Barrett missed an open 3. Two minutes later, Bam Adebayo came quickly with a double-team when Randle posted up Max Strus. Gabe Vincent was on the weak side of the floor guarding two Knicks. But he was drawn deeper into the paint when Josh Hart dove to the rim, leaving Barrett wide open on the right wing, where Randle hit him with a sharp skip pass:

“The game will tell you what to do,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said afterward. “I love the way [Randle] was attacking and then reading the game.”

2. Knicks beat the zone

That was man-to-man defense, which the Heat played for most of the first quarter. And after the Knicks scored 31 points on 23 possessions in those opening 12 minutes, Miami switched to zone and, basically, stayed in it for the rest of the game. In the regular season, the Heat played more zone than any team in the 19 years of Synergy tracking. And on Tuesday, they played more zone than they had played through their first six playoff games.

For the most part, it worked. It slowed the pace down (Game 2 was tied for the slowest-paced game of the playoffs) and made this game a bit of a grind. At times, the Knicks tried to force their way into the paint and came up empty.

But ultimately, this was the Knicks’ most efficient offensive game of the playoffs (111 points on 91 possessions). They found seams in the zone and got open shots when they quickly moved the ball from one side of the floor to the other. Brunson hit two huge 3s in the fourth quarter and both of them came against the Miami zone.

First, Hart got to the left baseline, with Kyle Lowry (like Vincent in the man-to-man possession above) guarding two guys on the weak side. Hart kicked it to Randle at the top of the floor, Lowry rotated up, and Brunson got a wide-open 3 in the corner:

With Adebayo fouling Isaiah Hartenstein as Brunson rose for his shot, that turned into a critical 4-point play.

“I think at the end of the game,” Hartenstein said, “we started to figure it out more, screening angles, flipping the screen.”

While screens aren’t the first thing you think about in regard to zone offense, it was a Hartenstein ball screen that freed up Brunson for his second fourth-quarter 3.

The Heat’s zone usually started out as a 1-1-3 configuration, so that the back guard (the second ‘1’) could switch an initial ball screen set on the front guard. But with the score tied and a little more than four minutes left, Caleb Martin was caught off guard when Hartenstein quickly flipped a screen on Vincent. With Martin late to make the switch, Brunson got a comfortable look at a pull-up 3 and put the Knicks up for good:

3. Second (and third and fourth) chances

The biggest possession of the game may have been the one prior to Brunson’s pull-up 3. If it wasn’t the most important trip down the floor, it certainly was the longest, lasting a minute and seven seconds, with the Knicks finally cashing in on their fifth shot of the possession, a corner 3 from Hart.

The Heat, in zone, defended the initial possession well, forcing a contested floater from Hartenstein late in the shot clock. But Lowry pulled down Randle on the ensuing rebound. Brunson then missed a tough layup, but Hartenstein beat Adebayo to the offensive board. After Quentin Grimes missed an open 3, Hartenstein came from the top of the key to grab another rebound, drawing a foul on Max Strus. Hart missed a jumper, but Hartenstein (while being held by Adebayo) tapped that rebound back to Hart. And finally, the Knicks worked the ball back to Hart in the right corner.

“It kind of shows who we are as a team,” Hartenstein said of the extended possession. “No matter what happens, we just stay together and keep going. I think that’s what got us here.”

After destroying the Cavs on the glass in the first round, the Knicks were somewhat held in check on the offensive boards in Game 1 of this series. But they grabbed 38.8% of offensive boards in Game 2, the Heat’s worst defensive rebounding game of the playoffs thus far.

4. Gabe the Gunslinger

With Butler (and Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo) out, the Heat needed more offense from everybody else. One player who doesn’t have a problem flipping the switch to full-gunner mode is Gabe Vincent, who took 23 shots in Game 5 in Milwaukee and has now scored 20 or more points in three straight games.

When the undrafted Vincent originally signed with the Heat in January of 2020, he was a scorer.

“He was a gunslinger,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said before Game 2. “That’s who he is.”

But the Heat needed Vincent to evolve into more of a playmaker … and more of a defender.

“We proposed it to him while we were in the bubble,” Spoelstra said, “knowing that this is one of the hardest things to do, to take a gunslinger and try to turn him into a combo guard. He had to really learn how to facilitate, run offense, be a defensive irritant.

“So a guy like that, we know, ‘Hey you need to be aggressive and assertive.’ He’s like, ‘OK, I just get to go back to my instincts.’ That’s the far easier part than trying to run a basketball team, which he’s made incredible strides with.”

Vincent hit the biggest shot of Game 1, a pretty audacious pull-up 3 that put the Heat up six with a little more than four minutes left. He had a couple of similarly audacious jacks in Game 2, but missed a pretty good look just prior to Brunson’s go-ahead pull-up. And ultimately, this game was about the Heat not being able to get stops.

5. A valuable hiatus

With multiple injuries in this series, it’s a good time for a three full days off, with Game 3 not until Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC). Of course, three days is not enough for a badly sprained ankle to fully heal. So even if Butler and Randle are available this weekend, every other step they take comes with the potential for re-injury. That’s already happened with Randle.

Thibodeau was asked if he expected Butler, whose toughness he’s quite familiar with, to play on Saturday.

“You already know the answer to that,” he responded, adding that uncertainty is “the nature of the beast right now, for everyone.”

Starting with Saturday, the Knicks and Heat will play every other day until a two-day break before a Game 7 (if necessary). And with the Knicks coming back to win Game 2, that if-necessary Game 7 is certainly more likely now than it was 24 hours ago.

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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.

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