NEW YORK — A lot of people have spent the past couple of days dancing on a hastily dug grave for the Boston Celtics. The Celtics weren’t just dead, they were reincarnated and killed again after two brutal losses at home to a Knicks team that wasn’t expected to sniff more than a token win.
“I didn’t get into the journey for it to be easy,” Joe Mazzulla said. “It’s been dark, but in a good way.”
If there's anything Mazzulla loves, it’s a challenge. Of the 100 men fighting the gorilla, Mazzulla is the first in line and the most excited to see where it goes. Unbridled success is boring to him, even though it’s the one thing fans crave the most. So while the world around him devolved into calls for his head, he demanded his team use the negativity.
“You’ve got to tap into your darkness,” he said. “We’ve got to do it. That’s it.”
That's one way to characterize what the Celtics did on Saturday afternoon in Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden was full of electricity. The crowd buzzed during the national anthem, hooting and hollering, unable to contain their excitement. They were ready for their Knicks to land their penultimate move, setting up their finisher to put the fraudulent Celtics out of their misery.
But Boston did what they couldn't do in their first two games. They hit shots.
“They were 20-for-40 from 3,” Jalen Brunson said after the game. “There’s not a lot that I can say.”
Brunson wasn’t the only one at a loss for words. The dark demons in green quickly silenced the Knicks crowd. The most they could muster after Boston’s six first-quarter triples and 16-point lead was angry demands like “do something!” By the second half, even the fake noise meter was ineffective in getting the Knicks faithful out of their seats.
“All the work you put in all year adds up to these moments,” Jaylen Brown said. “When it's not going in our direction. We don't complain. We got to find ways to win, dig deep, stay together as a group and come out and perform.”
The Celtics hit 3-pointers they didn’t hit in Games 1 or 2. They made defensive stops they couldn't at home. They stopped Knicks runs in their tracks by hitting timely shots, working the ball around, and knocking down whichever shot was open.
For whatever reason, the Celtics have fallen back into their early regular-season pattern of bewildering home performances followed by dominant road games. It’s nothing we haven't seen before. We just thought they’d moved past that.
“Being great in front of our fans is important,” Jayson Tatum said. “You know how much we value their support, but at the same time, you want to be special. If you want to be great, you got to win some games on the road. But more importantly, it's just about responding. We want to be perfect. We want to win every game. Essentially, that's just not going to happen. But how do you respond to those moments is equally important as well.”
Home teams are now 3-8 in the second round, and the Knicks are 1-3 at MSG in the playoffs, so the Celtics aren’t alone in this weird space. But the outside world doesn’t matter to Boston right now. It doesn’t matter that all three 60-win teams trail their semifinal series 2-1 at the moment. Mazzulla doesn’t want to add context to this darkness. He just wants it to be dark so players can find a side of themselves they can tap into and find their way past this hurdle. He wants all the noise so his guys can find a way to ignore it.
"Getting off social media. Don't listen to TV,” Payton Pritchard said. “Only worry about the people that are in this room. You've got to have a small circle and the people that believe in you, because there's a lot of people saying different things and stuff like that, but you've got to zone it all out and prepare for the moment."
This version of the Celtics hasn’t been tested like this before. No matter how well you prepare for a moment, the reality of the game can change what’s needed from players in a hurry. The Celtics got away from what they did best in Game 1, which cost them. When the collapse started happening again in Game 2, they overcompensated.
In Game 3, they got back to being themselves. Maybe the shots falling helped them out, but so did protecting the ball and not giving up transition points. So did defending the Knicks and not letting their good shooters get going. So did staying in the moment and not worrying about a few Knicks makes.
The Celtics have finally arrived in this series, but the most important thing to remember is that this is just one game. They have to duplicate it but under different circumstances Monday night. Then they have to come home and do it again. Their work is far from over, but if they can keep this same approach, the same will be said about their season.
“You gotta beat us four times,” Brown said. “That's what it comes down to. Not twice. Not once. Not three. You gotta win four games, so it’s a lot of basketball to be played.”