BOSTON — What first three games? What regular season?
Entering their second-round playoff series against a Celtics team that has had their number all season, the Knicks are tuning it out like white noise.
“Honestly, regular season doesn’t matter at all. Tonight’s the start of something new,” sixth man Miles McBride said after shootaround at TD Garden on Monday. “We’re gonna bring our best and see what happens.”
The Celtics enter Round 2 brimming with confidence after sweeping the Knicks 4-0 in the regular season. Two of those wins came by 20 or more. Another was a double-digit margin despite a late Knicks push.
But it’s the fourth meeting that lingers for New York — an overtime loss at Madison Square Garden where the Knicks led for most of the first half and battled wire to wire. They believe that game told a different story.
“They played better than us, for sure, for the first three games. Game 4 we played a lot better, and made it a game,” team captain Jalen Brunson said after Monday-morning shootaround. “So I think that’s growth, but we still lost all four games.”
Brunson said the team reviewed the film. The mistakes were clear. The progress was, too.
“Just take it one possession, one game at a time at this point,” said Brunson. “You can’t really focus on the past and think it’s gonna be the same. We can’t have that mindset at all. We’ve gotta be different. We’ve gotta be ready to go and we’ve gotta go out there and compete from the jump.”
20 THREES AND ME
The Celtics’ biggest weapon? The three-point line.
Boston hit 84 threes on 193 attempts in four regular-season meetings with New York — a blistering 43.5 percent clip. The Knicks, by contrast, went 45-of-128 (35.2%) from deep in those same games, falling behind in both volume and efficiency.
Guarding the arc has been a season-long weak spot for the Knicks — and a series-defining concern against a team that weaponizes the three.
Yet seven members of New York’s rotation boast individual seasons shooting 40 percent or better from downtown over the course of their careers. With Karl-Anthony Towns stretching the floor at the five, the Knicks have the personnel to trade threes — but Brunson warned against falling into that trap.
“While we’re on the court, we can’t be thinking about the math game. That’s more like a pregame or a postgame type of thing, maybe even at halftime. We’ve gotta generate good 3s and good shots,” he said after shootaround on Monday. “So yes they’re very good at what they do, which is creating 3s and advantages for each other on the offensive side of the ball.
Brunson emphasized the focus should be defensive stops that fuel transition offense.
“For us, we’ve gotta create good shots, play our best on the other side of the ball, get stops, create open 3s,” he said. “If we get a lot of good open 3s, that’s good for us. We don’t want to take a lot of bad 3s. Because that leads to long rebounds, gets them out in transition to do what they do best. So for us, we just have to play the other side of the basketball.”
GETTING STOPS TO GET STARTED
The other side of the ball may be the biggest key.
Boston’s defense is a chessboard of switchability — with Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum all capable of sliding up or down. Brunson, the offensive engine for New York, knows cracking that wall starts with tempo.
“[The plan to attack Boston’s switching defense is me] getting in the paint and making plays, seeing who’s going to over-help, over-react,” he said. “But I think the best course of action for us is getting stops, getting out in transition and playing fast.”
The Knicks believe the blueprint from their best moments still holds: gritty defense, fast breaks, and trusting the playmakers to create when the game slows down.
The Celtics switch everything. But New York’s best counter might not be a halfcourt tactic — it’s turning defense into offense before Boston sets its wall.
“They’re a great defensive team,” said Brunson. “They have plenty of ways they can play defense: switching and all that stuff, but our offense is gonna have to come from our defense. We’re gonna have to get stops.”
