BOSTON — It might be the biggest win of the decade — and the Knicks have to bury it. Because as Tom Thibodeau likes to say, the moment you start feeling yourself is the moment you get knocked down.
The Knicks pulled off one of the most shocking upsets of the postseason on Monday, stunning the defending champion Celtics on their home floor to steal Game 1 from the TD Garden’s storied parquet. It was a breakthrough for a team that went 0-10 against the league’s top three seeds during the regular season.
But they aren’t moving like a team that just secured its biggest win of the year.
Instead, the Knicks are taking the good, assessing the bad, and flushing the emotion that comes with toppling the NBA’s Goliath. They’ll enter Game 2 as if nothing’s happened — like the series is still tied 0-0, like they didn’t just dethrone the league’s most feared contender.
“And that’s the challenge for everybody. I think the playoffs, that’s sort of the nature of the beast. It’s very emotional. There’s great highs. There’s lows,” Thibodeau said in a Zoom call with reporters on Tuesday. “You have to navigate both. And no matter what happens, you don’t carry it over into the next game. You have to reset and be ready to do it all over again. And that’s the challenge that every team has in this league. So I think if you look at what it takes to win, you understand how important that is.”
The Knicks can’t afford to coast. In fact, there’s no reason to — even if two No. 3 seeds have claimed NBA titles in the last five years (the 2021 Bucks and 2022 Warriors), and even if 78% of teams who win Game 1 go on to win the series.
They have to treat the Celtics like an outlier. Boston is 4-0 following playoff losses in the past two seasons, and there were plenty of reasons why they stumbled in the opener: Kristaps Porzingis exited with an illness in the second quarter, Sam Hauser sprained his ankle in the first, and Boston shot just 15-of-60 from deep — a brutal 25% — to start the series.
The Knicks know they played well enough to win. But they also know Boston gave them openings they may not see again.
“I don’t think we played our best basketball. We got out-rebounded by 10. We gave up 24 second-chance points, we gave up some easy fast-break dunks that we shouldn’t have,” Josh Hart said on a Zoom call with reporters on Tuesday. “But also when a team isn’t playing well, it’s why are they not playing well? Is it because they are just off that day or is it because the defense or the other team is playing well and forcing them into playing that kind of style?
“So [did the Knicks take the win or did the Celtics cough one up is] a two-fold question because we could say the same thing in Detroit. It was six games, and I don’t think we played our best game in any one of those. But we’ve got to give Detroit credit because Detroit didn’t allow us to play our best game. Fortunately for us, we were able to win that series without playing our best game in any game of that whole series.
“Obviously [the Celtics] had some shots that they didn’t make that’s makeable shots for them. I feel like we executed our game plan, we played with physicality, with energy, we flew around. We had times in there where we were disruptive.”
The Celtics aren’t about to stop firing from deep. But after hitting just a quarter of their 60 attempts in Game 1, expect a more selective approach. Boston shot 5-of-23 from three in the first half and went ice cold in the fourth, connecting on just two of 15. It was a jarring sight for a team that led the league in both threes attempted and made during the regular season.
“What we do best is read the defense and take the best shot available. If you take 10 shots and say OK, in a vacuum, hindsight being 20-20, [you say] here’s what could be better considering this happened, that happened,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said after practice at the Auerbach Center on Tuesday. “So it’s just having a situational awareness and understanding of certain points in a game and how small runs and shots like that can impact it. It’s a balance.
“If the open ones go in, we’re not having this conversation, but since they didn’t, we have to have it and we have to be better in certain areas.”
The Celtics aren’t panicking. And they’re not using the word “urgency,” either. Not with Game 2 still at home.
“No. I think we all understand the opportunity that we have in front of us going into Game 2 and understanding we’re here at home and we understand that have to be better, plainly,” Al Horford said after practice Tuesday. “That’s just the way it is and I expect our group to respond and be better for tomorrow.”
And from Boston’s perspective, the real surprise would’ve been if the series didn’t get tough.
“It’s the playoffs. We didn’t expect it to be easy. We didn’t think we were gonna just sweep every time,” Derrick White said on Tuesday. “You never know what to expect with a playoff series and honestly we wanted to get Game 1 but it’s time to move on to the next day and whatever we can get better. It’s a big one coming up tomorrow.”
The Celtics are also zeroing in on OG Anunoby, who matched Jalen Brunson’s 29 points and shot 6-of-11 from beyond the arc — including a pair of threes that trimmed a 20-point Boston lead to 14 in the first half. Mazzulla rejected the notion that Anunoby’s scoring came as a result of his team easing up with a comfortable cushion.
“I think giving Anunoby hit those two 3s is not playing with the game. That’s just not having an attention to detail to the scout,” he said. “I think regardless of the score, you have to have a high level of execution, and it’s funny: even with the times where it was a closer game, we gave him some open looks, so I don’t think the score has anything to do with the mindset you have to have with executing the details.
“Whether it’s a four-point game or at the end of the second quarter with nine seconds left, we gave him a catch-and-shoot corner three wide-open and he missed that one. But when you’re up 20, we gave up two and he cuts it to 14. So the score doesn’t affect the process of what you have to do to execute the details of the game plan with effort and physicality.”
