The Celtics haven’t learned from their prior mistakes. Will the Knicks capitalize?

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Rustin Dodd tried to drink coffee like Dan Campbell. To put that in perspective, imagine trying to drink beer like Wade Boggs, eat hot dogs like Joey Chestnut or have a weekend in Vegas like Dennis Rodman. If The Athletic would like to fund a story on me trying to “eat sushi like Zach Harper,” I think the results might surprise readers!

How Does This HAPPEN?

Celtics keep doing same thing, lose to Knicks

We’re two games into the second-round series between the Celtics and the Knicks, and if you’ve only seen one of those games, you’ve actually seen them both. In Game 1, the Celtics were up 75-55 in the third quarter before losing 108-105 in overtime. Last night, they led 73-53 in the third quarter before losing 91-90 in regulation. In Game 1, they went 15-of-60 from 3-point range (25.0 percent). In Game 2, they went 10-of-40 from deep (again, 25.0 percent!).

When it came down to needing a big bucket on the final possession of the game, one of the Celtics’ stars lost the ball to Mikal Bridges, who seems to know adversity well. He took it from Jaylen Brown before Brown got a chance to put up a potential tying 3-pointer at the end of Game 1. Bridges tipped and intercepted a pass from Jayson Tatum, who was trying to scramble to get the ball to Brown, at the end of Game 2. The more the Celtics try to win these games, the more they do the exact same thing.

And I have to wonder: Where is Joe Mazzulla and the veteran Celtics leadership in any of this? Not to take anything away from the Knicks, who have completely bucked the stigma of not being able to beat the three best teams in the regular season, but we have a little time moving forward to celebrate their resilience and marvel at what they’re doing. Right now, I want to know why the Celtics are playing such dumb basketball. They won the championship a season ago and appear to have learned nothing from the experience.

Maybe that sounds like an overreaction because they can still come back and win this series. They absolutely can. It wouldn’t shock anybody if they ran off with the next four games. But they won’t win this series by playing their current brand of basketball:

• In Game 1 after going up 75-55, the Celtics shot 23.1 percent from the field and 21.4 percent from 3.
• Twenty-eight of their 39 shot attempts were 3-pointers.
• They had seven assists and six turnovers.
• In Game 2 after going up 73-53, the Celtics shot 17.9 percent from the field and 14.3 percent from 3.
• Fourteen of their 28 shots were 3-pointers.
• They had two assists and six turnovers.

The Celtics attacked the basket more, but there was very little semblance of team offense in those final 15 or so minutes of game time. Mazzulla can give all of the quotes he wants about liking the looks they got, but everybody else watching was wondering what the f— the Celtics were doing on offense. Boston’s offense was so bad (How bad was it?!) that when Tatum drove down the middle of the lane for a wide-open dunk with 18 seconds left, everybody was shocked he didn’t take a bad jumper.

At a certain point, Mazzulla has to take the reins here and get his players to stop settling for bad shots when they’re playing prevent offense as the Knicks gain momentum. At a certain point, Tatum and Brown have to try to win the game with sound decision-making instead of just coming across like they’re practicing some cool-looking shots.

The saying “Act like you’ve been there before” usually pertains to people not celebrating accomplishments or moments. The Celtics should act like they’ve won a championship recently. Like … within the last year. And use that experience to execute in tight games.

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The Last 24

How Pacers’ leading man rediscovered his joy

🏀 Hali back. Tyrese Haliburton was struggling to find himself. He has his joy back, and it’s fun.

🗣️ AI is bad. Not Allen Iverson — I mean using AI-generated voiceover of the late, great Jim Fagan on NBC. “No Dunks” crew breaks it down. 

🏀 Time to campaign. Steve Kerr and Chris Finch are already strategizing for this series. How? By working the refs in the media. 

🏀 Upper hand? Home-court advantage in the playoffs isn’t what it used to be. It’s time for some “road, sweet road.”

🤔 A new path? Brian Gregory has little NBA experience and is now the Suns’ general manager. How did it happen?

🎧 Tuning in. Today’s “NBA Daily” discusses how the Knicks pulled off another surprising big comeback in Boston.

Thunder Clap

Thunder add to point-differential history

When the Nuggets mounted their Game 1 comeback and Nikola Jokić’s incomprehensible statline had everybody buzzing, you started getting people questioning if anything Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder did in the regular season mattered. This questioning happened last year when they lost to Dallas in the second round. Maybe Big Honey and them boys were going to give the Thunder a second shot of the same experience. Maybe OKC’s big leads would disappear and the tight games the Thunder never found themselves in would simply cause too much pressure to pull through. I know these questions happened the other night because I both fielded them and asked them.

Last night, the Thunder decided to remind everybody of that regular-season dominance. After Jamal Murray hit a floater to put the Nuggets up 2-0, the Thunder proceeded to go on a 149-104 run the rest of the game to win, 149-106. Not quite wire-to-wire for the victory, but 47:05 was pretty good. The 43-point victory made even more history for the Thunder in this historic season of dominance:

• There have now been 30 times in NBA history that a team has won by 40 or more in a playoff game. The Thunder are the only team in history to have two of those in the same postseason. The Lakers in `84, `85 and `86 had consecutive postseasons with 40-point victories, but never two in the same playoffs. Remember, the Thunder beat Memphis by 51 in the first round. Their 87 first-half points against Denver were the most in a first half in playoff history.

The Thunder channeled all of that questioning after Game 1 into taking out their frustration on the Nuggets in Game 2. And we’re left wondering if the Thunder have brought back what they needed to gain control of this series in Denver. We know they’re the better team, but Jokić is still the best player in the world, even if the results in Game 2 didn’t have the internet questioning the assumed MVP vote like after Game 1. That talking point front was awfully quiet as Jokić fouled out in the third quarter.

For OKC, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was a plus-51 in 30 minutes, as he scored 34 points on 11-of-13 shooting from the field and had eight assists. The history working against the OKC is that the Nuggets haven’t lost a playoff series when they’ve won the first game. And they did accomplish what they needed to accomplish. They left OKC with home-court advantage, if that still means anything in this postseason. After all, OKC is the only team in the second round to win a home game, so far.

Point differential is supposed to be an indicator of future success. Game 1 made that seem like some nerd stuff to kick around on a TI-86 calculator while the rest of us play a preloaded, choose-your-own-adventure game called “Drug Wars” (yes, that was a real game possibility on a graphing calculator in the ‘90s). Game 2 reminded everybody the Thunder have the No. 1 seed for a reason.

We won’t learn more about what this means until we see OKC in a hostile environment over the next few days and see how the Thunder’s youth handles that pressure on the road, at altitude. Then, we’ll find out which questions pop up for either team.

Surviving Sans Steph

How many games will hamstring injury cost?

Even though the Warriors took Game 1 on the floor of the Target Center on Tuesday night, they suffered a major loss. Steph Curry left early in the second quarter with a hamstring strain and did not return. Yesterday, he was diagnosed with a Grade 1 strain, and the Warriors said he’ll be re-evaluated in one week. Much like referees walking off a 10-yard penalty in a football game, let’s walk off what a one-week absence would mean for Curry in this series:

• Game 2 is tonight.
• Game 3 is on Saturday.
• Game 4 is on Monday.

So, that’s missing three games right there. A possible return in Game 5 would be eight days out, and that’s if this timeline for re-evaluation stays on track and the injury prognosis is good enough for Curry to get back on the court. Here is some possible worse news for the Warriors though: According to injury expert Jeff Stotts, a Grade 1 strain’s average time lost is roughly 10 days, not one week.

If that holds true for the 37-year-old Curry, he’d be knocked out of Game 5 as well. Game 6 doesn’t fall within that 10-day time frame, though. It would come 12 days from this diagnosis.

It looks like we’re likely seeing Curry miss three games from this series against the Wolves, at minimum. We can lock that in, barring some miracle recovery. As we’ve seen plenty of times before, hamstring injuries don’t just get magically better once you’re back. They’re often nagging ailments that seem to get re-injured, especially if a player comes back early.

The questions then become: whether Curry can definitely be back and himself for Game 5, and how the Warriors survive the games without him? I’m not sure “Just do what you did in Game 1” is an easy-to-replicate strategy. The Warriors were plus-10 with Curry on the floor in 13 minutes, and plus-one in 35 minutes without him.

The Warriors shot 3-pointers well without Steph on the floor, knocking down 11 of 28, but they only made 38 percent of their 2s. They also turned the ball over 21 percent of their possessions. They have to take care of the ball, slow the pace way down, find a way to score inside (get mismatches for Jimmy Butler and post him up), get to the free-throw line and win with defense. They posted a phenomenal 100.0 defensive rating in the minutes without Curry.

The Warriors must make the game slow, ugly and uncomfortable. Then, they should hope their sound outside shooting continues and doesn’t go down for Minnesota. Most importantly, Golden State needs that one-week re-evaluation to mean Curry’s back in a week and not any longer.

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(Top photo: David Butler II / USA Today Network via Imagn Images )

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