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, attempting 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.

This time, it’s a surprise. Cleveland and Boston ran away to the top two records in the East, but the Knicks ousted the defending champions and the Pacers blew away the top-seeded Cavaliers in five games to set up this matchup between the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds.

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.

“There was definitely a sense of hatred for each other. So I think that makes a good rivalry,” Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “They have a history of finding a way to end each other’s season, so it’s up to us now to add our names into history and see what we do.”

ALL-ROOKIE TEAM

Stephon Castle gets one more accolade from his rookie season: The San Antonio guard was the only unanimous first-team selection on the All-Rookie team.

Castle — the league’s rookie of the year — was the only player to get first team votes 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.

Edey (73 first-team votes, 27 second-team votes) joined Castle and Risacher as the only players to appear somewhere on all 100 ballots. Wells was on 99 ballots, Sarr was on 96 and Ware was on 94.

Utah’s Isaiah Collier was one point shy of tying Carrington for the final spot on the second team.

The Warriors’ Quinten Post was among the others who received votes. The list includes Utah’s Kyle Filipowski, Detroit’s Ron Holland II, the Los Angeles Lakers’ Dalton Knecht, Phoenix’s Ryan Dunn, Philadelphia’s Jared McCain, Toronto’s Jamal Shead, Orlando’s Tristan da Silva, Minnesota’s Rob Dillingham, Philadelphia’s Justin Edwards, Washington’s Kyshawn George and Houston’s Reed Sheppard.