Saturday was billed as the biggest Knicks home game in the past 25 years. It ended up being a big letdown.
The Celtics built a 16-point lead in the first quarter; it ballooned to 31 points in the third quarter. The Garden crowd erupted when the Knicks cut the deficit to 20 with 10 minutes to play, but there was no miracle comeback on Saturday.
Poor energy/offense doomed the Knicks early, and the Celtics' hot shooting was too much to overcome in Game 3.
In some ways, what happened on Saturday was the worst-case scenario for New York.
The Celtics found a rhythm behind the arc and looked way too comfortable on the Knicks' home floor. At times, it looked like a replay of the regular season, when Boston thoroughly dominated the Knicks.
“They got some clean looks early, and they see it go in. That gives them confidence and it’s hard to shut them off,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “We have to have greater awareness. We can’t allow missed shots to take away from defensive tenacity.”
Another issue brought up in the postgame locker room? The Knicks’ low-energy start to the game.
“They just came out with more urgency,” Mikal Bridges said.
“I don’t think we came with the mindset of being satisfied, but I think it was subconsciously satisfied with being up 2-0,” Jalen Brunson added. “But it’s not what we need to approach the game.”
If you read these quotes and wonder how a team in the Knicks’ position can start a game without good energy, you’re probably not alone.
Sometimes players use the "we didn’t have good energy" excuse as a cliché to describe a loss. In this case, it didn’t seem to be a throwaway line. Several players felt the effort on defense was influenced by what happened on the other end of the floor.
“We can’t let makes and misses affect how we’re playing on the defensive end. When we’re not making shots, we’ve got to make it tough for them,” Josh Hart said. “We’ve got to fly around more. We’ve got to rebound the ball, we’ve got to deny them of second chance points. We’ve got to do more things. We know this was far from our best game. We’ve…
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