Little-used reserve Tony Bradley helped Pacers blunt Knicks’ rebounding edge
NY Post
INDIANAPOLIS — While Tom Thibodeau’s rotation is getting even shorter as the playoffs progress, Rick Carlisle went 11-deep in a close game Friday night as the Pacers seized a 2-0 series lead over the Knicks.
After acknowledging that his team was outdone on the boards in Game 1, Carlisle turned to little-used reserve big man Tony Bradley for a couple of brief stints to combat Mitchell Robinson’s athleticism on the boards.
Bradley only had played 17 minutes of mop-up duty in four appearances in the postseason, but he banged bodies a few times and grabbed a couple of rebounds with a positive rating of plus-1 in eight minutes — four each in the second and third quarters — in the Pacers’ 114-109 victory in Game 2 at the Garden.
“Tony Bradley hasn’t played in the series, but he’s one of our better rebounders,” Carlisle said after the game. “We elected to go with him to spell Myles [Turner] a little bit. We’re a team that needs everybody. That’s how we’ve got to play.”
Turner and backup center Thomas Bryant each picked up two fouls in the first half, and Carlisle didn’t hesitate to turn to the 6-foot-10 Bradley, a 2017 first-round pick out of North Carolina.
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