Jalen Brunson held a steel chair. Tyrese Haliburton had brass knuckles.

As the star point guards glared at each other in a WWE wrestling ring last summer in Madison Square Garden, it seemed a fitting next step in the rivalry between the Indiana Pacers and New York Knicks. It’s already featured headbutts and chokes, so why not weapons?

The teams go at it again starting tonight in Game 1 of the Knicks’ first trip to the Eastern Conference finals in 25 years, with the winner of their ninth playoff matchup headed to the NBA Finals.

“It’s obviously a storied rivalry between the two franchises, so to add another chapter to it is going to be a lot of fun,” Haliburton said.

It sure was for Haliburton and the Pacers last year when the teams met in the second round. Indiana won Game 7 at Madison Square Garden against a Knicks team that was decimated by injuries, shooting an NBA playoff-record 67.1% from the field in a 130-109 romp. Haliburton scored 26 points and afterward wore a sweatshirt to his news conference with a picture of Reggie Miller making a choke signal toward Knicks fan Spike Lee on the sidelines during a playoff game three decades earlier.

Haliburton returned to the Garden to troll New York fans again about a month later, atte mpting to interfere in a match on behalf of Logan Paul. Brunson, with a seat in the crowd near the ring, intervened and LA Knight pinned Paul.

After the match, Brunson grabbed the chair and entered the ring to protect the winner when it appeared Paul and Haliburton had him surrounded.

“I’ll be back! I’ll be back!” Haliburton yelled toward fans after exiting the ring.

Well, here he comes.

“It was obviously something that he wanted to do and the way he played last year in the playoffs, I mean, it was fitting,” Brunson said. “And so, he played well in the Garden. Obviously Knicks fans and Pacers fans, they go back and forth. But I think he did a great job with it last year but now we’re moving on.”

A Knicks-Pacers series could be penciled into the spring schedule in the 1990s. The teams met six times in an eight-year span, starting with a 1993 series that included John Starks getting ejected for head-butting Miller. Indiana won the last one in that stretch, a victory in the 2000 East finals the most recent time the Knicks advanced this far.

Things are different now. Brunson and Haliburton are friendly, having been teammates in 2023 on the U.S. team that played in the Basketball World Cup. But Miller will be in the arena, working the games as an analyst for TNT, so there will be a reminder of the way Knicks-Pacers used to be.

All-Rookie team

The Spurs’ Stephon Castle — the league’s rookie of the year — was the only player to get first-team votes to the All-Rookie team from all 100 members of the global panel of sportswriters and broadcasters who cast ballots to decide most of the NBA’s annual awards.

He was joined on the first team by Atlanta’s Zaccharie Risacher (who was one vote away from unanimous status), Memphis teammates Jaylen Wells and Zach Edey, and Washington’s Alex Sarr.

The second-team selections were Miami’s Kel’el Ware, Chicago’s Matas Buzelis, New Orleans’ Yves Missi, Portland’s Donovan Clingan and Washington’s Bub Carrington.