What, Knicks worry? They take 41-point lead in ousting Celtics, moving on to conference finals

Scattered around the fringes of the court at Madison Square Garden were not only fans with fame or fortune but faces from Knicks past. Bill Bradley and Walt Frazier were on one end of the floor. Bernard King was courtside. Allan Houston and Larry Johnson, key parts of the 1999-2000 team, also were there.

They too had waited for this moment, a chance to witness a 48-minute celebration, allowing 25 years of pent-up frustration and waning patience to finally shake off the shackles of history. The Knicks answered all of the questions that had accumulated in that quarter-century and most important, the ones that dogged them throughout this season.

Would the offseason makeover, the all-in deals, pay off and lift the team to the level of the elite teams — particularly a team like the Boston Celtics?

The answer was delivered with a merciless, one-sided exclamation point as the Knicks eliminated the defending champions, 119-81, on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

The oddest thing might have been that no one seemed ready to leave, even with the score one-sided — it was the largest margin of victory in Knicks playoff history — and the benches emptied to the farthest reaches. The fans waited for this and were sticking around for the party. Even the players themselves celebrated little, insistent that this was just a step in a larger goal.

“I think the way you have to look at it is whatever your ceiling is, that’s what you’re striving for,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “You’re trying to go past whatever the expectations are for you. If everyone commits to that, the challenge is to bring the best out of everybody. The goal is always to win a championship. We’ve got eight wins. We need 16. And each one gets harder and harder. So you’ve got to keep fighting, and you’ve got to understand how important that is.”

It had been 25 years since the Knicks made the Eastern Conference finals and 26 since they celebrated a playoff series win on their home floor. And when they finally did, it was turned into a sing-along event by late in the third quarter as the game turned into a series of highlights and high-fives. And it certainly wasn’t only the 19,812 inside, but the crowds on the streets around the arena who let loose on this night.

The third-seeded Knicks will face the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals — and by eliminating the second-seeded Celtics while Indiana knocked off top-seeded Cleveland, the Knicks now will have homecourt advantage, hosting Game 1 on Wednesday night.

An 0-8 regular-season record against Boston and Cleveland turned out to matter little as the Knicks looked far different from the team that began the season. They also didn’t look like the team from Game 5 while ending Boston’s season in shocking fashion.

Even before the Celtics lost Jayson Tatum to a ruptured Achilles in the final minutes of Game 4, the Knicks had won the first two games on Boston’s floor and then had control of Game 4 for a three-games-to-one lead.

The close-out was put on hold for two days as Boston rallied for a Game 5 win at TD Garden on Wednesday, but it also set up the chance for the Knicks to clinch at home, and they were determined not to repeat the failure from that previous game.

“Just the way, the whole day of Game 5, it just wasn’t us,” Jalen Brunson said. “And we knew that, we reflected on it, and we came back and we said we need to be ready, we need to be better. The way we prepared, the way we talked out there, the way we made it an emphasis to have each other’s back and to continue to cover for each other. It’s focused on the defensive side of the ball, and when we’re doing that and offense, we’re flowing. So we’ve just gotta focus on the little things, and we did that.”

“Yeah, it was time,” Deuce McBride said. “It was time for us to play with the lead and play tough with the lead and be the more physical team and outlast them. I mean, honestly, it was in my mind. We have a lot of great leaders in this locker room, a lot of guys that have been through finals, won championships. We all felt like we have a chance to do something special. So we all felt like it was time.”

This game turned into a rout in the second quarter and the lead grew to 41 points on OG Anunoby’s three-pointer with 1:51 left in the third quarter.

Brunson — whose father, Rick, was a part of that last team to reach the conference finals and now is a lead assistant on the Knicks’ staff — had 23 points and six assists. Anunoby had 23 points and nine rebounds, Mikal Bridges added 22 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 21 points and 12 rebounds. Josh Hart had a triple-double with 10 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists.

Jaylen Brown had 20 points and seven turnovers for Boston before fouling out late in the third quarter.

The Knicks had a different feel from the very start, playing with an aggression and urgency that was absent Wednesday in Boston as the Celtics, understandably, played with emotion in the wake of losing Tatum.

Rather than Brunson trying to put it on his shoulders, he began the game by searching out teammates. Towns had 11 first-quarter points, Bridges added 10 and the Knicks had a 26-20 lead at the end of the period.

But that was just the prelude to what was to come. The Knicks scored the first seven points of the second quarter, capped by a smothering defensive play by Mitchell Robinson, who raced to the corner to close out on an open Brown. He stopped on a dime and the 7-1 center enveloped Brown, deflecting the ball free and leading to a layup for Towns on the other end.

Boston called timeout, but there was no stopping the avalanche that came as the Knicks outscored the Celtics 38-17 in the second quarter to build a 64-37 halftime lead. The 37 points were the fewest Boston had at halftime in any game this season.

When it was over, all of the doubters had been proved wrong.

“We’re not the media,” Towns said. “As long as we believe in each other, we can do something special. And as long as the belief in that locker room is that, we don’t care what anyone outside that locker room says.”

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.