The Knicks have wanted the Celtics for a year. The Knicks didn’t just want the Celtics, they were built to beat the Celtics if they got the chance. And honestly? They were built in the hopes of being the Boston Celtics.
Now they get their shot because Jalen Brunson made the biggest postseason shot for the Knicks since Allan Houston made a runner one day to beat Pat Riley and the Heat in old Miami Arena, not long before Larry Johnson’s 4 at the Garden one night against the Pacers. That’s how big Brunson’s 3 felt the other night in Detroit.
This is the Knicks’ chance to knock off basketball royalty, and make Celtics vs. Knicks a real rivalry for the first time in 50 years, back when the Knicks — briefly — were royalty in the NBA in the early ’70s. But they have not been that since, even as exciting as the ’90s were in Basketball New York, when the Knicks made two trips to the Finals.
Put it another way: The Knicks worry a lot more about the Celtics than the Celtics do them.
The Celtics are 18 championships. The Knicks are two. The Celtics won titles in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s and ’80s and then finally won a couple more in this century. The Knicks won their last title in 1973, beating the Celtics in a memorable playoff series along the way.
But now this is their chance to knock off the varsity in their conference, in these conference semifinals. This is their shot at doing what they firmly believed they were ready to do last spring: Going up to Boston as flinty underdogs and getting either Game 1 or Game 2 and making the semis a series.
The Knicks did a lot to squander that shot against the Pistons until they finished the way they did in Game 6 and then Brunson made his 3-point shot, as Mike Breen sent them and Knicks fans rollicking into the second round with his wonderful double-bang call.
Here is the Knicks’ chance to finally get past the second round for the first time in a quarter-century. Here is their chance to make their 0-4 record against the Celtics during the regular season go away. By the way? For most of those games, the Celtics weren’t just beating the Knicks. They were dismissive of them.
Sometimes a team can flip a regular-season narrative in the postseason, of course. It happened what feels like a hundred years ago for the Dodgers in 1988, back when they were playing another National League Championship Series against the Mets. That year the Mets had beaten the Dodgers 10 out of 11 games during the regular season. Everybody old enough remembers what happened then. The Dodgers had Orel Hershiser and the Mets didn’t and the Dodgers finally won that series in seven games. All this time later, and in basketball, the Knicks are hoping that Brunson — our flopping superhero — can play that same role and his team can find a way to shock the world and take out the champs.
They wanted them, they got them.
This series is why Leon Rose traded Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to the Timberwolves for Karl-Anthony Towns. The Celtics have old friend Kristaps Porzingis, a 7-footer who could step outside and rain down 3-pointers the way the rest of the Celtics can? The Celtics have a guy that size who could score inside and outside? Rose went and got himself that kind of big guy in Towns.
The Celtics have the great Jayson Tatum (who must find it amusing when other young stars are called the future face of the NBA) and Jaylen Brown as splendid and tremendously athletic wing guys? Rose in the last year or so has added OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges. Again: Be the Celtics, to beat the Celtics. If they can somehow manage that against the odds.
Rose didn’t just trade five No. 1 picks to get Bridges. He traded them to give himself his best chance to somehow go toe-to-toe with the defending champs. Then he watched a regular season when his team, as talented as it is in the starting five — and despite another 50-plus win season — couldn’t beat the Celtics, couldn’t beat the Cavaliers and might have been a No. 8 seed if it played in the Western Conference.
After all that? Leon Rose watched in the first round of the playoffs as his team played a life-and-death series with a young and inexperienced Pistons team, one that felt as if both teams had match points in every single game.
The Knicks thought they were ready for the Celtics a year ago before they got rolled by the Pacers in Game 7, got rolled so badly you worried that Jimmy Dolan might try to find a way to fire the place afterward. So they waited a whole year for Game 1. They made those trades, as a way to be more like their big brothers up in Boston, a team that has played in two NBA Finals in the past three seasons. Real basketball royalty and not wannabe basketball royalty.
“They’re the defending champions,” Tom Thibodeau said in Detroit after Game 6. “So we know we’re going to have to be at our best.”
Oh, no, Mr. Thibs. They’re going to have to be much better than that if the two teams are both close to being at full strength. And if they are at their best, maybe this can feel like a real rivalry at this time of year for the first time since the ’70s. People sometimes act as if it’s the Yankees vs. the Red Sox. It hasn’t been close, not for a very long time.
But maybe for the next couple of weeks. First at their Garden and then at ours. This is what the Knicks wanted. This is who they wanted. Game 1 Monday night.
