Mikal Bridges and the Knicks sealed another 20-point comeback to stun the Celtics, escaping with a 91-90 win to go up 2-0 in the series.
BOSTON — The New York Knicks did it again.
Down 20 in the third quarter of Game 1. Down 20 in the third quarter of Game 2.
Two huge comebacks. Huge plays on both ends of the floor. Contributions from everybody in the rotation. Two incredible wins … on the road … against the defending NBA champions.
This one was a little uglier, but just as stunning, a 92-91 victory that gave the Knicks an improbable 2-0 series lead over the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The score was 73-53 Celtics through the first 33 minutes, and it was 38-17 Knicks over the last 15. Jalen Brunson scored the deciding points at the free throw line with 12.7 seconds left, and Mikal Bridges came up with the defensive stop that sealed the game.
“That’s the playoffs,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said afterward. “You gotta keep fighting. Every possession matters and you got to play all 48 minutes.”
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film after a shocking three days at TD Garden …
1. Déjà vu all over again
The Knicks went scoreless on their first nine possessions of the game, had four points with a little more than four minutes left in the first quarter, and totaled just 33 in the first and third quarters combined.
Though the Celtics’ offense wasn’t much better than it was in Game 1, they were still up 16 with 8 1/2 minutes left. But then they scored on just one of their their next 12 possessions, and that was a transition leak out that resulted in two free throws for Derrick White.
In the halfcourt, the Celtics came up empty. They were 0-for-13 from the field (0-for-7 from 3-point range) in that stretch, with five guys contributing to all those misses. There were some great looks, but they didn’t go in.
Brunson even got a couple of stops. He twice switched onto Jaylen Brown, one of the matchups the Celtics have been working to get all series. But Brown came up short on a jump hook and an elbow jumper over the Knicks’ point guard. White rebounded the second of those shots, but missed a point-blank tip-in.
After the Knicks went up three with a 19-2 run, Jayson Tatum attacked Karl-Anthony Towns in the pick-and-roll and got to the line. The Celtics got a stop and then they finally got a bucket.
After a timeout, they decided to inbound the ball in the backcourt. That allowed Tatum to get downhill, using an Al Horford screen at midcourt and blowing by Mitchell Robinson for dunk to take the lead back with 18.5 seconds left.
After Brunson put the Knicks back ahead by spinning past Jrue Holiday and drawing a foul, the Celtics chose to run the same exact play.
This time, OG Anunoby didn’t get taken completely out of the play by the screen, and Robinson was able to stop Tatum’s initial push. Tatum tried to cross over and drive left, but lost his handle a bit.
There were bodies in the paint, so he tried to get a stepback jumper from the left baseline with four seconds left. That’s when Bridges left Jaylen Brown and swarmed Tatum.
Bridges was initially credited with a block and a rebound, but the official scoring was later changed to a steal. Tatum saw the double-team, but just a second too late. He tried to kick the ball back to Brown, but Bridges was all over him with his seven-foot wingspan.
On both of the Celtics’ last two plays, the Knicks were able to get Brunson and Towns off the floor. Robinson couldn’t contain Tatum on the first one, but the Knicks’ defensive lineup got the final stop.
“We just weren’t able to convert in the fourth quarter,” Brown said. “That’s what it came down to. Our defense, I thought, was great. We had physicality, we had energy on defense. Our offense let us down.”
The Celtics have now scored an anemic 38 points on 50 possessions in the fourth quarter and overtime in this series. They’ve shot 11-for-53 (21%) over those 29 minutes.
2. Bridges lifts Knicks in the fourth
Though the Knicks’ comeback had begun, at the end of the third quarter of Game 2, Bridges had zero points, having missed all eight of his shots. But his night was far from over.
Bridges scored 14 of the Knicks’ 30 points in the final period, with his six field goals being one more than the Celtics had in the final 12 minutes.
Bridges scored nine of the Knicks’ first 11 points of the period, beating Holiday one-on-one to put the Knicks within 12. So the Knicks kept the ball in his hands, even after the Kia Clutch Player of the Year (Brunson) checked back into the game with 6:39 left.
That choice paid off, with Bridges beating Holiday again for a reverse that made it a 10-point game …
Next possession: transition 3.
Brunson, Towns and Josh Hart handled the scoring after that, but the Knicks got back into this game because of Bridges’ fourth-quarter flurry. He went from 0-for-8 to beating Jrue bleeping Holiday on multiple fourth-quarter possessions to lift his team to an incredible win. And of course, he capped it off with the defensive play of the night.
3. Hart makes Celtics pay for leaving him alone
When the final buzzer sounded on Wednesday and without a glance at the box score, you would have had a hard time identifying the game’s leading scorer. It wasn’t Brunson or Towns, Tatum or Brown.
It was Josh Hart, who scored 23 points (one shy of his career playoff high) on 9-for-15 shooting.
The Celtics have been very willing to help off of Hart, the non-shooter in the Knicks’ starting lineup. And that help resulted in two of the Knicks’ 16 turnovers (defenders leaving Hart to dig against the Knicks’ ball-handlers) and a pair of blocks when Al Horford left Hart to double Towns in the post.
But the non-shooter is now 11-for-25 (44%) from 3-point range in the playoffs, he’s given the Knicks some much-needed transition offense, and he’s been able to take advantage of the Celtics’ disinterest in guarding him.
Hart was 3-for-6 from beyond the arc on Wednesday, and he made himself available when the Celtics loaded up against Brunson.
In the fourth quarter, after setting a screen for Bridges, Hart ran free to the glass, grabbed the offensive rebound, and fed Brunson for a 3-pointer that got the Knicks within six.
Later, he was able to drive past Horford’s close-out after the Celtics’ big man was hanging in the paint in help position …
“He’s real clever,” Thibodeau said. “He plays a lot bigger than his size. The rebounding, but also the finishing ability inside. But he’s worked a lot on his shooting. If you leave him open, he’s not hesitating. He’s just letting it fly. I think that’s huge for us.”
Despite the 23 points in Game 2, Hart will continue to be left open. As a team, the Knicks have scored just 100.5 points per 100 possessions in this series, so it’s not like the Celtics’ overall defensive strategy isn’t working.
And New York’s chances of getting two more wins may continue to depend on Hart’s ability to make shots and make plays.
4. Porziņģis remains a non-factor
Kristaps Porziņģis played just 12:58 in Game 1, shooting 0-for-4 and missing the entire second half because of an illness. He was available for Game 2, but came off the bench for the first time this season.
Porziņģis scored eight points on 3-for-5 shooting, with a big dunk to start the fourth quarter. But was seemingly still hampered by whatever he’s dealing with.
It wasn’t long after that dunk that he signaled to the bench that he needed to come out of the game. He checked out with 8:27 left, having played just 13:53 and with the Celtics having been outscored by nine points (they scored just 23 on 26 offensive possessions) in that time.
5. Champions aren’t supposed to fold like this
The Celtics are the first team in the 29 years for which we have play-by-play data to lose multiple playoff games it led by at least 20 points.
The increase in 3-point rate over the last 15 years has increased variance from quarter to quarter, but not by a ton. Teams are still 590-34 (.946) in games they led by at least 20 points this season.
More important, the first team to blow two 20-point playoff leads shouldn’t be the team that dominated the postseason just one year earlier, never feeling threatened on its way to the title. There shouldn’t be an “Oh no, here we go again” feeling of dread in the building with 18 championship banners hanging from the ceiling.
But it was the same Celtics that didn’t lose more than a game in any series last year that came apart in two straight this year. The last 51 hours have provided more drama than their entire journey to the 2023-24 title.
“It’s an opportunity to show what we’re made of,” Brown said. “Obviously, we wouldn’t like to be in this position, but we’re here now. So we got to respond.”
The Celtics will travel to New York with the knowledge that they’ve played better on the road than at home. In fact, when they played outside of Boston in the regular season, they outscored opponents by 9.5 points per 100 possessions, the second best road mark in the 29 seasons for which we have play-by-play data.
They’re not done yet, but they’ll need to show some championship mettle in Game 3 on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC) at Madison Square Garden.
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John Schuhmann is a senior stats analyst for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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