Knicks are long overdue to give Garden faithful a playoff closeout victory
New York Knicks fans enjoy the New York Block Party outside Madison Square Garden before Game 6 in the Eastern Conference semifinals of the NBA basketball playoffs between the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics Friday, May 16, 2025, in New York. Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II
Hyperbole runs deep in the world of sports marketing, but it’s hard to quibble with the claim that Madison Square Garden is The World’s Most Famous Arena.
Over the years, the Garden has been the site of four Democratic National Conventions, one Republican National Convention, two landmark Papal visits, Marilyn Monroe’s famous birthday serenade to President John F. Kennedy, concerts by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Phish, the “Fight of the Century” between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali and countless great basketball and hockey moments.
One thing Madison Square Garden hasn’t been the site of in the 21st Century? A Knicks closeout victory in the playoffs.
Knicks fans were hoping that would change Friday night when the Knicks hosted the Boston Celtics in one of the biggest games to be played at the Garden in decades. The Knicks had a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinal series. Tickets for Game 6 were projected to be the most expensive Knicks home tickets in history, according to multiple ticket marketplace sites.
It’s easy to understand why. The Knicks really had a chance to make history here, and make it against one of their most hated rivals. Heading into Game 6, the Knicks had not clinched a playoff series in any round in front of their hometown crowd since June 7, 1999, when they eliminated the Pacers in the sixth game of the Eastern Conference finals.
In all fairness, the Knicks haven’t had tons of opportunities, given that they missed the playoffs in 16 of the last 25 years.
In that span, the Knicks had played only five games in which they could close out an opponent and lost all five.
In 2001, the Toronto Raptors, thanks to Vince Carter’s 27 points, beat them, 93-89, in the deciding Game 5 of a best-of-five first-round series.
In 2013, the Knicks won the first three games of their first-round series against the Celtics but blew a chance to sweep at TD Garden, playing Game 4 without J.R. Smith, who had been suspended for throwing an elbow at Jason Terry in the previous game. The players wore black as if they were going to a funeral for Boston in Game 5 at the Garden, but instead it was the Knicks who got buried. Though the Knicks finally won the first-round series at TD Garden in Game 6, the extra wear and tear took its toll on Jason Kidd and they lost in the next round to a young Pacers team.
Last season, the Knicks could have finished off Philadelphia at the Garden in Game 5 of the first round but lost an overtime game after Tyrese Maxey scored seven points in the final 25 seconds of regulation. Then, decimated by injuries, the Knicks lost the final two games of their semifinal series with Indiana. In their Game 7 loss in front of a pumped-up Garden crowd, Jalen Brunson broke his hand, the Pacers shot a playoff-record 67.1% and Indiana won, 130-109.
Which brings us to this year. In Game 5 of their first-round series against the Pistons, when the Knicks had a chance to close it out at home, Brunson and Josh Hart waited a full 90 seconds at the scorer’s table for Tom Thibodeau to call a timeout. By the time he did, the Pistons had taken control of the game and won, 106-103. The Knicks ended up winning Game 6 on Brunson’s three-pointer with 4.3 seconds left in Detroit.
That’s a long history of blown closeout chances at the Garden, one that almost makes you wonder if there is something about the intensity of playing in an arena filled with rabid partisan fans that actually gets into the heads of the players.
The Knicks had a chance to change all that on Friday, a chance to bounce back from their blowout loss in Boston on Wednesday and win a closeout game against a team that is missing its best player (Jayson Tatum). Thibodeau, in his pregame news conference, was well aware of the challenge his team was facing.
“There’s a lot of emotional highs and lows and you got to deal with those things and I think it’s important to be disciplined,” Thibodeau said. “I think the discipline gets you past any distractions. Got to play with toughness. Each game you got to reset. What is going to go into winning that game? So there’s no carry-over from the previous game.Just lock into what’s in front of you.”
What was right in front of the Knicks is a chance to change history and come up with a closeout game worthy of a sellout crowd at The World’s Most Famous Arena.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
