Knicks get blown out in Game 3 as Celtics find their touch from three-point range
In the streets outside of Madison Square Garden, the party had started early, with 33rd Street filling up long before the 19,812 had crowded inside. And before the Knicks even emerged from the locker room, it picked up inside, too, with the fans chanting “Let’s Go Knicks!” as they took their seats in the most eagerly anticipated game at Madison Square Garden in decades.
But the Knicks never joined the party.
The crowd invited them, chanting “Dee-fense!” and loudly applauding every basket. But the defense rarely responded and the opportunities for applause were few and far between as the Knicks fell behind by as many as 31 points in a Garden party-spoiling 115-93 loss to the Boston Celtics on Saturday afternoon.
The excitement and dreams that came with the pair of comeback upsets in Boston were crushed almost from the opening tip as the Celtics took the game, the crowd and their heart.
“I thought they just came out with more urgency,” Mikal Bridges said. “That’s pretty much it. They came out, set the tone and put us on our heels.”
The loss left the Knicks with a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, with Game 4 on Monday at Madison Square Garden.
“They’re down 2-0 and you knew they were going to come out with a sense of urgency, a sense of desperation,” Josh Hart said. “That’s something that we should have did a better job with. We knew it was going to happen. We didn’t play with enough energy, enough physicality from the jump and make them uncomfortable. We knew that was going to happen and we didn’t respond appropriately.”
“It's the NBA playoffs,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “We all gotta walk in with that kind of urgency. That shouldn't be something that we have to tap into. It falls on all of us to come in with that kind of urgency, that desperation, that will. Not when we're down 20.”
All of the Celtics' flaws that had been on display as the Knicks took the first two games of the series in Boston were cured in Game 3. After shooting 25-for-100 from beyond the arc In the first two games, the Celtics shot 50% this time, connecting on 20 of 40. They were 6-for-7 in the first quarter and followed that with an 8-for-11 flurry spanning the second and third quarters as they took a 77-48 lead.
Late-game collapses? This time they answered every Knicks run with another back-breaking shot.
“You’ve got to beat us four times,” said Boston’s Jaylen Brown, who scored 19 points. “That's what it comes down to. Not twice, not once, not three. You’ve got to win four games. So there’s a lot of basketball to be played.”
The Knicks, to a man, struggled on both ends of the floor. Through the first three quarters, before the Knicks began to finally find the basket, Boston was 16-for-31 from three-point range and the Knicks were 2-for-17.
Jalen Brunson’s fourth-quarter effort made his scoring a passable 27 points, but through three quarters, he had six field goals and four turnovers. Towns had 21 points and 15 rebounds while playing 36 minutes despite appearing to reinjure his left middle finger (he would not comment on whether he had X-rays afterward). But the Knicks got little from anyone else.
Payton Pritchard scored 23 points off the bench and Jayson Tatum had 22 for Boston.
The Celtics understandably did not take their foot off the gas after the Knicks' comebacks from 20-point deficits in each of the first two games, and Boston coach Joe Mazzulla still had his team intentionally fouling Mitchell Robinson late in the third quarter with the Celtics up by 31 — an embarrassing dig, as Robinson was 4-for-12 on free throws. Boston still had its starters in for a minute late in the fourth quarter after Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau had cleared his bench.
“It’s the urgency we have to bring to a game, to a playoff game,” Thibodeau said. “We knew they would come out with aggression and we gotta make sure we’re bringing aggression and force as well. And again, there’s gonna be runs where you’re not making shots, and you get going with your defense, get a couple easy baskets and all of a sudden you get rhythm. So, we gotta be better and we will be.”
The Knicks put together an early flurry at the start of the fourth quarter with three-pointers from Brunson, Deuce McBride and then Brunson again to cut their deficit to 20. But spotting the Celtics a 31-point lead was too much for this comeback to take hold.
If the Knicks intended to come out with force and prevent another huge deficit, that notion was dismissed quickly. The Knicks were 1-for-7 from three-point range and 8-for-23 overall in the first quarter. Adding to the troubles, Towns and Robinson each picked up two quick fouls and Robinson again was targeted by Boston. The Celtics wasted little time hacking him to send him to the line and he was 0-for-4 — including an air ball on the fourth attempt. The Knicks were down 36-20 after one quarter and fighting uphill from there.
And now the pressure was removed from the Celtics — at least until Monday.
“It’s been dark, but in a good way,” Mazzulla said. “You just have to tap into your darkness.”
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.
