The Celtics look ready to do it again in blowout opener vs. Knicks: 10 takeaways
Boston tied an NBA record for most 3-pointers made, and dug into the shell-shocked Knicks on defense from the jump.
The Celtics were the best team in the NBA by a wide margin last season, and they opened their 2024-25 season with a 132-109 blowout win over the Knicks.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Much is made about the Celtics’ 3-point shooting and their well-balanced roster, but we might not talk enough about how mentally tough they have been over the last two seasons.
One of the more understandable losses a team can take is ring night after winning a championship. Emotions run high before the game begins, and the team gets to celebrate the culmination of last year’s work one last time before diving into a new season. They get rings. They raise a banner. They give speeches to raucous applause.
Then the lights come back on, the smoke clears, the banner case is rolled away, the layup lines resume, and shortly afterward, a basketball game tips off against a good opponent who just spent the last 45 minutes watching a rival be crowned. Ring night isn’t a schedule loss, but it’s a tough game.
On Tuesday, the Celtics smacked the Knicks in the mouth immediately. They had Jrue Holiday guard Karl-Anthony Towns. They treated Jalen Brunson the way they treat Trae Young (and Tyrese Haliburton and Tyler Herro and Luka Doncic and any number of other scoring guards who can’t defend any of the Celtics’ starters 1-on-1). They created so many open 3-pointers that when their starters checked out of the game in the fourth quarter, the bench had a chance to make 3-point history (more on this in a moment).
Their defense was particularly nasty – note how Jrue Holiday floats from assignment to assignment here, preventing the Knicks from targeting Luke Kornet in the pick-and-roll.
“The biggest thing I’m proud of is the mindset of the guys,” Mazzulla said. “We weren’t stuck in the past. We were able to transition from what got us to where we were to where we’re trying to get to with the intangibles.”
The Celtics are a championship-quality team in terms of talent, and the ring ceremony was a beautiful reminder of that quality. But they also have a championship mindset that will serve them well as they run it back.
As Tatum put it after receiving his first championship ring: “Let’s do it again.”
2. And speaking of Tatum, he opened his season with one of the better regular-season performances of his career – 37 points on 14-for-18 shooting and 10 assists.
The scoop in his shot is completely gone. In its place is a picture-perfect jumper that he can let fly with ease both off the catch and off the dribble. When the Knicks went under screens, he burned them in the pick-and-roll. When they got caught going over, he … also burned them in the pick-and-roll.
Maybe the wildest play of the game came in the second half when the Celtics swung the ball to a wide-open Tatum, who made the baffling decision not to shoot. Tatum waited until Jericho Sims closed out, then dribbled his way into an iso triple instead. He canned it.
Tatum won’t shoot 8-for-11 from three the rest of the way. But he looks comfortable and confident, both as a newly crowned champion and as the proud owner of a new jump shot.
“Tatum is going to be a problem,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “He’s a great player. You have to guard him with your team.”
Guarding him with your team, of course, is also how Tatum ends up with 10 assists.
He may not be the favorite, but don’t write off his MVP chances just yet.
3. As Mazzulla walked out to receive his championship ring, he bent down and kissed the parquet floor.
What did it taste like?
“Blood? Maybe I wish it did,” Mazzulla said.
And what did he think of the ring?
“I don’t know,” he said, somewhat dismissively. “This thing’s too big. I don’t … why is it so big? I’m never gonna wear it. But it’s cool to have.”
He did, however, appreciate the banner.
“They represent so much,” he said. “The banner was the highlight for me, because it represents a lot of things that go into it, and the rafters have a life of their own in this building. So that moment was the coolest.”
4. Mazzulla might think the rings are a little big, but they certainly look pretty great.
“That ring is just an object, right?” Jaylen Brown said. “But it’s the everything, the emotions, the heartbreak, the embarrassment, the work, the drive, the dedication, like that’s what that ring represents, you know what I mean?”
5. The Knicks have a lot of time to figure themselves out, but for a team that appears to be trying to recreate what the Celtics have, they have a glaring weakness: Not one, but two defensive targets in their starting lineup with Brunson and Towns. The Celtics have zero defensive holes in their starting lineup, which is quietly one of the biggest reasons they are so tough.
6. The Celtics made 17 3-pointers in the first half, and they tied the NBA record for most 3-pointers made in a game with 8:54 remaining. Garbage time was about to ensue, which meant plenty of minutes for Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser The record appeared all but assured.
Then the Celtics went icy cold. Brown missed twice. Xavier Tillman missed. Pritchard and Hauser missed three combined 3-pointers on one possession. The crowd begged the team to break the record (and the players were clearly aware they were on the verge of history), but Pritchard very respectfully dribbled out the shot clock in the final minute without attempting one more, and the Celtics had to settle for a record-tying 29 3-pointers (and 12 straight misses in the final eight minutes). In the end, the Celtics attempted 61 triples and shot 47.5 percent from deep (29-for-49 for 59 percent if you remove the final 12 shots).
Brown summed it up succinctly: “Once the crowd got into it and we started hunting them, we couldn’t even hit the broad side of the barn. Everything was off. We got a bunch of great looks and it was like a lid on the basket. So that just shows, like, we’re not a team that’s hunting 3s. We play the game and we do what we’re supposed to do, but I think towards the end it was tough because we wasn’t playing the way we had normally played.”
7. The Celtics as a team finished with 10 times more assists (33) and twice as many steals (six) than turnovers (3).
8. Al Horford started and played 30 minutes, while Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman split up 15 and 17 minutes respectively. Much was made in the preseason about the potential of Kornet starting, but that appears to have fizzled quickly.
Horford finished with 11 points on 4-for-7 shooting (3-for-5 from three).
9. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were all in the building, and Bob Cousy made an appearance as well.
“I didn’t see Bob Cousy play, but I remember the Celtics winning a championship in 2008,” Tatum said. “I was like 10 years old. I watched Ray and Paul and KG, I grew up watching those guys, and it was like a full-circle moment for them to come back and share that moment with us and kind of pass the torch or whatever that symbolized.
“I’m still a fan of those guys. They are part of my childhood. So that was an incredible moment, dapping it up with them, KG was screaming in my ear, and I was like, ‘I’m really talking to Kevin Garnett right now.’ I never take those moments for granted. I still think s— is still cool to be a part of things like that.”
10. Next up for the champs: The Celtics head to Washington to play the Wizards on Thursday, before traveling to Detroit on Saturday to take on the Pistons.
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