Knicks' Game 5 silver lining: They knew what had to be fixed
Knicks guard Josh Hart reacts after fouling Boston Celtics guard Derrick White during the second half of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals on Wednesday in Boston. Credit: AP/Charles Krupa
It was easy for the Knicks to wonder aloud where things went wrong Wednesday night in Boston. After squandering a chance to eliminate the Celtics, they basically could’ve listed the reason by checking “all of the above.”
And in that, maybe they could find solace.
Jalen Brunson wasn’t going to foul out again — because he almost never does.
OG Anunoby wasn’t going to shoot 1-for-12 again — because he hadn’t done that all season long.
Luke Kornet wasn’t going to dominate with seven blocked shots and 5-for-5 shooting and Derrick White probably wasn’t going to light up Madison Square Garden with 34 points the way he did TD Garden on Wednesday night.
At least some of the wide-open three-point shooters for Boston would be covered.
And on a night when all seemed to go wrong, there was a bright side. No one came off the bench for a fight. No suspensions were awaiting them at Madison Square Garden on Friday night. All of the key pieces were healthy. And most of all, they had another chance.
It wasn’t Game 7 that they imploded in Wednesday. It was Game 5. The Knicks were up three games to two on the Celtics, and as they took the floor at the Garden on Friday night, they were still on the verge of reaching a place it might have been hard to imagine at the start of the series. So they chose to not forget all that had gone wrong, but to use it.
“No, you don’t flush it,” Josh Hart said. “You learn from it. You go watch film, you see where we messed up, and there were a lot of mess-ups in terms of communication and execution. So you don’t flush it. You watch it, you learn from it and you get better next game.”
Just showing up certainly isn’t enough against the defending champions, who seemed to play with a greater urgency than the Knicks after losing star Jayson Tatum, who suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon in Game 4. And it figured to be the same on their end with Tatum heading from a New York hospital, where he had surgery Tuesday, to the team hotel to greet them and provide another measure of inspiration.
So the lessons learned are easier to take when there is a chance to fix them, and it was the Celtics who still were without Tatum. The Knicks have had time to see how the Celtics adapted to life without Tatum and prepare their counters.
Without Tatum, the Celtics did not rely on their star isolating and picking apart the defense, instead rushing the ball up the floor, and the Knicks’ issues were twofold: They were slow to get back in transition and then failed to communicate, which led to two and three defenders heading to one player while others were open with no defender nearby.
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau is not the type to just rely on believing Brunson will bail them out or Karl-Anthony Towns is overdue or that any of the things listed above will self-correct. So the Knicks had about 48 hours to review the film, make the corrections and prepare.
“You can’t have any personal dilemmas of if you’re missing a shot or if it’s not going well for you offensively, that you’re jogging back,” Thibodeau said. “You’ve got to sprint back, you’ve got to communicate. And we’ve got to be matched up. If one guy is slow, you’re going to give them an open shot. You can’t do that against this team.”
“Just in the first half, defensively, we weren’t there. In transition, especially,” Mikal Bridges said. “We weren’t communicating to each other. They were making shots and they brought that to the third as well . . . We kept fighting and they kept going. We can’t keep putting ourselves in those situations, especially when it was close at the half. We got to do a better job of communicating on defense.
“We didn’t get back on defense. Didn’t communicate at all. We’ve just got to play desperate. I don’t think we did that. We gotta come out aggressive throughout the whole game.”
These were corrections the Knicks knew they could make, still had the opportunity to make. And doing it on their home court, where they had a chance to clinch a postseason series for the first time in 25 years — the same span they had gone without reaching the Eastern Conference finals — certainly was the goal.
So the Garden was set for a celebration, even if it was a little more nerve-wracking than the party outside the Garden on Wednesday. And even if the Knicks were focused only on the one night and making it right after all of the wrongs on Wednesday, their fans undoubtedly wanted to crowd onto the streets around the arena again for a joyful noise, looking ahead to the Indiana Pacers and home-court advantage in the next round, rather than awaiting a Game 7 in Boston on Monday night.
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.
