Knicks’ Josh Hart jokingly demands for Celtics to be drug tested after record-tying performance
"I ain't never seen nothing like that before, man."
The Celtics opened the season in-style Tuesday night, cruising to a blowout win over the rival New York Knicks and raining down an NBA record-tying 29 3-pointers in front of the TD Garden crowd.
After the game, Knicks guard Josh Hart was asked whether the Celtics did anything unusual to generate so many open looks.
Hart shook his head and made a joke about the Celtics’ shooting performance.
“I don’t know. The NBA needs to drug test all of them,” Hart said in a video posted to X by SNY. “I ain’t never seen nothing like that before, man. I mean, you’ve got to give them credit.”
“They were already an explosive team and obviously there was an energy in the arena and it was contagious,” he added. “They played extremely well and we’ll look at it, we’ll learn from it, look at some of the defensive mishaps that we had that led to other shots, but it’s game one. We have (81) other ones.”
The Celtics, led by Jayson Tatum and his re-worked jumpshot, buried 10 3-pointers in the first quarter.
As they barreled towards the record, whispers of how close they were got around the building. Derrick White said he started asking about it around their 26th make. After Al Horford tied the record with the 29th make, the crowd began chanting for one more.
But the Celtics went cold and missed 13 3-point attempts in a row over the final eight minutes of the game.
The Celtics are now tied with the Milwaukee Bucks, who set the record in 2020.
Boston’s Jrue Holiday, who was with Milwaukee at the time, led the Bucks with six threes in that game.
Holiday went 4-for-6 from 3 against the Knicks Tuesday night. The Celtics finished 29-for-61 from 3, which was 10 more misses than the Bucks had.
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