Josh Hart: “I Was Trying To Order Some Uber Eats”

Different, but exactly the same. In a strain of cowardice that echoes fouling Mitchell Robinson for the sake of it when you know he’s burning you, I’m abandoning (most of) what I said after Game 1 except for how that game made me feel, fuck it all: the New York Knicks can do this. Whether I actually believe that…[REDACTED]

The hedges, the ankles, the stomachaches you wait until 3 pm local time to hear about on either team’s injury list; the weirdo, questionable inability to hit open shots at home, as defending champions; and here we are: the New York freaking Knickerbockers lead the aforementioned champion Boston Celtics, having now beaten them twice at home after twice being down by 20 points following Wednesday’s 91-90 win.

From early in the first quarter, it looked like Boston was going to be the team it has been all season, especially against the Knicks: going up by twelve and fourteen and eventually twenty – again, after having done so in Game 1 – the Celtics cruised on much better shot-making, if not necessarily outstanding shots from three.

The Knicks weren’t knocking them down from anywhere. With seven minutes left in the first quarter, Karl-Anthony Towns hit New York’s first field goal, a short-range baseline bank shot. It’s not looking great, but it is looking correct. “Yes, of course the Knicks would cede one back to Boston. After all, a series doesn’t start until the home team loses, a-ha!”

Over the following three quarters, the Celtics made a ton of shots and missed another lot of open looks, drew it to another 20-point lead in the third quarter and, seemingly, had everything working in motion in the exact ways it all was not on Monday.

Former Knick Kristaps Porzingis, whom you may remember as the consolation prize from the Karl-Anthony Towns draft lottery in 2015 and who missed all of the second half of Game 1 with an illness, hit a three-pointer to put Boston up 73-53 with two and a half minutes left in the third quarter. Safety requires a buy-in of all parties involved; by the time the game went under five minutes left, I was pacing around my living room.

Over a minute later, Deuce McBride slammed a running dunk, kicking off a ten-minute long, 34-13 siege on the Celtics, culminating in a Jalen Brunson jumper to put the Knicks up 87-86 with under two minutes to go (Shout out to Deuce McBride, by the way, an endless fount of resplendent joy). Boston kept missing shots, sometimes inexplicably, a continuation from Game 1. Mikal Bridges scored all 14 of his points in the fourth quarter. With under a minute to go, Brunson hit a typically slinky layup to put the Knicks up 89-86.

Towns fouls Tatum, who hits the subsequent free throws; the real savvy[1] then ensues: Brunson misses a quick three, Boston takes a timeout, and Tatum runs fairly cleanly and quickly to the rim on the ensuing possession. Celtics up 90-89 with eighteen seconds left.

Fortunately, no OT required this time. Five seconds later, Brunson draws a foul on Jrue Holiday, nails the free throws to put the Knicks up 91-90. Joe Mazzulla chose to roll the ball out without another timeout, and Tatum’s indecision drew a double-team that forced the ball out of his hands and, uh-oh! for the second straight game on the final possession, into Mikal Bridges’ hands, who threw it ahead and out of danger. No shot: only the buzzer.

Somehow, the New York Knicks[2] are now up 2-0 on the dismally waffle-stomping defending champions. They only took 40 this time, but the Boston Celtics made 25% of those shots, identical to their Game 1 output. Brown and Tatum went a combined 3-12 from three, literally reflective of the team’s shooting: 10/40 from distance.

New York got away with a shooting night that also happened. They shot…9/31 (29%) from distance and hit free throws at an identical rate. This wasn’t a dynamic shooting performance from the Knicks. This is a group, though, that knows sense when to take advantage of opportunities, and when the Celtics again started missing shots down the stretch, they pounced. New York is now the first team in NBA playoff history to win back-to-back games after having been down 20 points or more.

Given just about everything up to and including the four factors, Boston should be leading this series. It remains likely that the Celtics will get it together and run the Knicks down at home, particularly when the vest-clad denizens of midtown go to cozy suites and find out who is on the team for the first time abandon those majestic harbors at halftime[3], but that’s as specious as having tried to predict these two games in the first place.

It would behoove the Knicks to take advantage of Madison Square Garden, but after all this, maybe the Celtics’ blowout game is still coming. I doubt this, but: Maybe it never will! This has been a wild ride; it continues into the sun, its participants and passengers bleeding openly.

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[1] Is Jalen Brunson a bit of a foul merchant? Perhaps. Is Jalen Brunson a winning basketball player, given current circumstances? Well, folks, I’m not going to defend the means, but I do love the ends – a bias I will rarely afford others.

[2] Pardon the full-on name every so often; I just truly cannot believe what I watched, and my fingers need to remind themselves about whom they’re typing. Celtics fans: you must always feel like this?

[3] Likely Celtics fans anyway. Or “Nets fans.”