This one, this Game 1, wasn’t about the old days with the Knicks and the Celtics, and times in the ’70s and ’80s that have nothing to do with this one. No. This night up in Boston was about young Knicks fans, ones in their 20s, born around the time when the Knicks, with Patrick Ewing on his last legs, last made the Eastern Conference finals. On Monday night, at somebody else’s Garden, those young fans are the ones who got the biggest win they’ve ever had.
They got a Game 1 in the second round when the Knicks looked like more than the Second Round Knicks, did that against the champs, did that against a Celtics team that had rolled them in three of the four games the two teams played during the regular season. Ultimately what the Knicks did was exactly what we’ve been saying they needed to do for two years — if they could, that is — and go up to Boston and take Game 1.
“We just told each other to keep believing,” Jalen Brunson said when it was over.
Only when it was 72-52 for Boston with six minutes left in the third period, there was no reason for Brunson or any of them to have any reason to believe. This game was looking like the other games. Even with the Celtics on their way to missing a grand, whopping total of 45 3-point attempts, they were up 20 and once again treating the Knicks dismissively; as if, in the words of Looie Carnesecca, all they needed to do was roll the balls out to beat the Knicks.
Then everything changed.
Of course it is just one game in a 7-gamer. Of course no one expects the Celtics to be 15-for-60 when shooting 3’s on Wednesday night. We know the mood swings and momentum swings that can come right away, in the very next game, even after a game like the Knicks just had.
But suddenly on Monday night, 72-52 in the third, the Knicks getting bullied by the Celtics all over again, the Knicks made their stand. They would have to hold the Celtics off later with the way they played down the stretch in the fourth, and then all the way until Mikal Bridges stole the ball from Jaylen Brown at the end of overtime. In the process, the Knicks didn’t just exhibit the “mental toughness” about which Tom Thibodeau spoke when it was over. They were a better version of the Celtics on this night. Leon Rose had built this roster to beat the Celtics. In Game 1, that is exactly what they did.
And winning time really did start over the second half of the third period. It wasn’t just Brunson (29 points in 44 minutes even if he did miss an easy one that would have won it for his team in regulation) now. It was all of them throwing a switch, and a big punch. The glue guy, Josh Hart, made a 3. Then OG Anunoby, playing the biggest game he’s played for the Knicks so far with 29 points of his own, made a 3-pointer. And made another one. Just like that, this playoff game wasn’t those regular season games. And Game 1 was changing before our eyes.
Brunson scored. Then scored again. Hart scored again and then Brunson made a crazy, running 3. By the end of the period, the Knicks had cut more than half off that 20-point Celtics lead, even as the Celtics just kept hoisting up 3’s.
There was a time last year when I was talking to John Calipari, Karl-Anthony Towns’ old coach at Kentucky, about him, and how the Knicks had made that trade to give themselves a better chance to take out the Celtics if they ever did get the chance.
And Cal said in passing, “You know, there’s going to come a night in the playoffs when the Celtics aren’t going to make a hundred 3’s.”
That night was Monday night when, by the end of overtime, it felt as if Tatum and Brown and the rest of them had missed a hundred 3’s. That is the biggest reason of all why, and at long last, the sides looked even with these two teams for an hour or so, as the Knicks kept telling everybody they were going to be once the playoffs started. For most of the first 30 minutes of these games, the Knicks looked overmatched, as they had against the Celtics when they were going 0-4 against them, the way they looked against the Cavaliers and the Thunder. Only after that, it was the defending champs who looked overmatched.
The Celtics were about to be down 0-1 the same as the Cavaliers were after Game 1 against the Pacers, the way the Thunder would be after their Game 1 against the Nuggets. Again and again and all day long: Just one game. Celtics are still the Celtics. Knicks still haven’t been more than the Second Round Knicks for 25 years. The qualifiers remain the same. It’s hard to believe the Celtics will have two games in a row when they can’t throw the ball into Boston Harbor. But they didn’t just give the Knicks this game with their poor shooting. The Knicks took it. From those guys.
This was the kind of game the Knicks stood up and won last week in Detroit, when Brunson made his 3-point-shot-heard-round the world. But these weren’t the Pistons. These were the Boston Celtics. The Celtics playing at their Garden. Watching the Knicks put it on them to the tune of 56-33 over the last 23 minutes and until Bridges took it away from Brown. Getting bullied by the Knicks this time.
There have been other postseason moments since Patrick broke down for good. Not like this one. We talk constantly about old guys with the Knicks, and the old days. Not Monday night. This was about the young. And for them.
