Celtics 132, Knicks 109: “All they do is shoot 3s”

A barrage of Boston bombs knackered the Knicks in an opening night nightmare

In the 1956-57 season when the Boston Celtics won their first title, they won the opener against the New York Knicks. In 1962-63 they won their sixth title, opening with back-to-back blowout wins over the Knicks, by 33 in Beantown and 25 in the Big Apple. The last year the Knicks won a title, their first meeting against the Celtics was a 17-point loss. Last year Boston won the first four match-ups, only dropping the last one after their focus had turned to the playoffs.

That’s a whole lede paragraph devoted to what’s no exposé: the Celtics are usually better than the Knicks, often far better, as they were last night curb-stomping the city’s team at the city’s game 132-109, the pièce de résistance a 27-8 first-quarter mollywhopping run. My hope is that appealing to history can highlight the utter meaninglessness of this game, one no Knick fan enjoyed, and invite you instead to view it as what it most essentially is: first blood. The journey of 1000 miles that begins with a single step? Sometimes that first step’s a doozy.

Jayson Tatum made more 3s in the first half (6) than the Knicks (4), keying a ridiculous +39 differential from deep for the hosts by halftime. This past summer a few of God’s more distant relatives deluded themselves into proclaiming Tatum’s Olympic struggles a sign his end was nigh. Those false prophets have scattered and clickety-clacked all the way back to the shadows, silenced after his blistering 14-of-18 shooting, 37 points and a dime of dimes in 30 tidy minutes. This one should count twice.

Those of you already thinking “I’d trade Jericho Sims and Ariel Hukporti posthaste for 2021 Nerlens Noel and Taj GIbson, by God!”, I invite you to cue up the Knicks’ last game before the OG Anunoby trade, a late December loss in Orlando. Down the stretch RJ Barrett nobly battled the far bigger Paolo Banchero. It was obvious to anyone watching the Knicks at that time, bloated in the backcourt and thin up front, that salvation would be found outside the roster. It was. Not quite a year later, look who’s lacking up front again.

If it’s this obvious to you, me and Dupree that a championship team has to be better at center than these Knicks currently are, then it’s obvious to the powers-that-be. The Knicks have made impactful trades each of the past two seasons. The obscene CBA changes make it harder to make moves, but New York features one of the league’s top front offices. If these two teams meet in the playoffs, the Celtics will probably look pretty much the way they did tonight. The Knicks probably won’t.

The radical shift from an offense with Mitch at the pivot versus Towns raises questions about how the Knicks, last year’s top dogs on the offensive glass, will fare on that end with so many possessions likely to end with KAT behind the arc. Last year Mitchell Robinson averaged five a game. Last night the Knicks had five. Total. Somehow the Celtics, who shot 55% from the field and 53% from deep in the first half, ended up with six offensive rebounds to the Knicks’ one. That is neither sustainable nor tolerable, but until this team establishes a new identity for itself and its bigs they’re a far cry from Mitchenstein at the 5. The good news: most teams are not going to shoot sixtysomething 3s or make sixtysomething percent of them.

Last night, while not an encouraging answer, was also incomplete. Imagine transplanting Luke Skywalker from A New Hope to the Emperor’s throne room at the end of Return of the Jedi. Or if Frodo’s quest began in Mordor. Their stories would have ended quickly and not happily. Good guys need to lose, to taste their own blood, to work their way up. It hurt to lose like this last night — to them, of all teams, with everybody watching — but the glass is as full as it is empty.

This game contained a constellation of asterisks. Nobody plays like Boston. Two-thirds of their shots were 3s — they made an absurd 60% before an late-game cold snap, the kind of shot-making that would’ve sparked a witch trial up there a few generations ago. The Celtics chased the record for most 3s made in a game, ultimately tying the mark at 29. Not many teams, if any, will threaten to do the same. Even Boston will be hard-pressed to.

It was ring night, against the team these sullen champs heard all offseason is their biggest threat. The crown seems to rest uneasily: at the Paris Olympics, Tatum’s rep and play slipped noticeably from his NBA standards, while Jaylen Brown is in the running for the most unsatisfied 28-year-old (tomorrow!) defending champ and reigning Finals MVP who’s banked $130 million in salary with another $288 million owed him ever. He still sounds troubled that not every single person in creation thinks the Celtics did something amazing last June.

I read somewhere I can’t remember that from the 2019 Raptors through the 2023 Nuggets — the so-called Age of Glorious Parity, the one Adam Silver keeps telling us we want — every champ lost one or more key players the following offseason. The Raptors watched Kawhi Leonard go as literally far from Toronto as he could. The Bubble Lakers lost Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard and Danny Green. PJ Tucker started one of 20 regular-season games with the 2021 Bucks, then 19 of their 23 playoff games, his minutes climbing from 20 to 30; Milwaukee said “It’s been real” and let him sign with Miami. Gary Payton and Otto Porter played important roles for the Warriors’ last championship team, then played elsewhere immediately after. The Kroenke’s weird cheapness since the Nuggets won it all began by bidding adieu to Bruce Brown.

These Celtics? No such luck. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish may not be walking through that door, but pretty much everybody else is: the top-10 paid C’s from last year are all back. Their continuity is up the wazoo. The Knicks’ is not.

Quoth jaybugkit: “All they do is shoot 3s.” It can feel that way, though it’s not like the Celtics were launching contested Hail Marys with the shot clock winding down. They kept getting one good look after another, even the nine in a row they kept missing at the end. The league’s best team last year is still the best in October. That’s the bad news.

The good is that this 23-point loss, tonight — and it was not even close to that close — is as far as these Knicks will be from beating these Celtics, from wherever this season takes them, from whatever final verdict history renders on the Leon Rose/Tom Thibodeau era. Exhibit B will be Friday’s home opener against Indiana. No better time for a win.