Knicks outmatched by Celtics again, can't avenge opening-night loss
Precious Achiuwa of the Knicks and Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics battle for a loose ball during the first quarter at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
There was no ring ceremony for the Knicks to sit through. It was long past the opening night jitters and the unfamiliarity with the new teammates.
But in the Knicks’ first chance to avenge that opening night embarrassment, as Saturday night’s game began, it looked awfully familiar to those who recalled that not-ready-for-prime-time start to their season.
The Knicks dug a hole they spent much of the night digging out of, and when they finally drew close, the Celtics just ran off another one-sided stretch to put the game out of reach.
When it was over, it was just as embarrassing as the first meeting. The Celtics’ 131-104 win at Madison Square Garden did little to convince anyone that the Knicks are any closer to catching the defending champions.
“I mean, I said yesterday that playing them, it’s always to see where we are,” Jalen Brunson said. “We see where we are.”
And where is that?
“Not where we want to be,” he said.
If you needed one image, it might have been Precious Achiuwa stumbling as he ran back on defense and rising to his feet with his back turned to Payton Pritchard, who drained a three-pointer over him. That extended Boston’s lead to 27 and sent the Knicks to a timeout to empty the bench with 5:29 remaining.
Just like the first meeting, a 132-109 loss in Boston, the Knicks fell behind by as many as 35. The only difference this time is it came in the fourth quarter rather than the first half.
Other than a brief third-quarter flurry, the Knicks never were in the same class as the Celtics. And the problems were all too much like that opening night.
Mikal Bridges couldn’t hit a shot. The defense left three-point shooters wide open, caught often in switches that had players seeming unsure of where to go. And even Brunson’s heroics could not make up for the inability of anyone to slow Jayson Tatum.
Tatum had 40 points, 19 in the third quarter, when the push of the Garden crowd as the Knicks mounted a comeback was silenced by his production.
Brunson had 36 points and Josh Hart added 17, but the Knicks still looked far from up to the task of catching the Celtics.
The Knicks fell 2 1⁄2 games behind second-place Boston in the Eastern Conference race, and this game still might not be the measuring stick that some hoped opening night would be.
The Celtics were without Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, who was a late scratch with an illness, and the Knicks didn’t have OG Anunoby. Karl-Anthony Towns, who had been downgraded from probable to questionable during the day, played but appeared to struggle, finishing with nine points and nine rebounds in 28 minutes.
“We know we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Towns said. “Simple as that. There’s no sugarcoating, there’s no moral wins, nothing like that. It’s something we’ve got to work on if we expect to beat a team that y’all have expectations of us to compete for and be. If we also have those same aspirations in this locker room, which I know we do, we’ve got to find a way to beat teams like tonight.”
After Brunson kept the Knicks within striking distance almost singlehandedly, scoring eight points in the opening 2:38 of the second half, Towns’ drive and dunk with 8:52 left in the third quarter cut the deficit to 68-60. Bridges, who was 2-for-11 to this point, connected on a baseline jumper and the gap was six.
Hart converted a layup on a pretty feed from Brunson, and when Hart came up with a steal to start a fast break, Brunson found Bridges trailing the play for a three-pointer. Boston’s lead, once 18 points, was down to 70-67.
But the Celtics rattled off seven straight points to push the lead back to 10, and that began a 19-3 burst that made it 89-70.
The last time they met, on opening night at TD Garden, the Knicks retreated to their locker room as the Celtics went through the festivities of the ring ceremony to celebrate the NBA championship they’d won months earlier. And if the Knicks knew what awaited them, maybe they wouldn’t have left the locker room.
Perhaps the best thing to come from the opening night blowout was that the Knicks had shrugged off the debacle, recovered their footing and continued on what they insist is a path to be at their best at the end of the season.
So by that theory, they would be at their worst on opening night, and that certainly was the case. The problem for the Knicks was that it wasn’t better in Game 52.
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.
