Jayson Tatum needs to save Celtics from fire after another collapse against Knicks

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BOSTON – What would Jayson Tatum have said? How would he have explained his turnover with two seconds left in the Celtics’ 91-90 Game 2 loss to the Knicks? How would he have reacted after one of the worst postseason outings of his career, which ended with a 1-of-5 fourth quarter during his team’s second straight second-half collapse?

Would Tatum have projected confidence? Would he have sounded defeated? Would he have waved aside his struggles and set a defiant tone for the rest of the second-round series? Nobody knows for sure because a fire alarm went off inside TD Garden before Tatum could deliver his postgame interview Wednesday night. An arena employee rushed into the news conference room to alert the media that everyone needed to evacuate the building. Fire trucks were stationed near an exit on a side street off Causeway as the issue was investigated. By the time writers were allowed back into TD Garden, the Celtics had called off Tatum’s usual media availability.

It didn’t take an obnoxious ringing noise to know that flames were coming for Boston’s season. That, even if the building wasn’t in danger of burning down, the Celtics were inhaling smoke and blistering from the heat of another Knicks comeback. Up 20. At home. In the second half. For the second game in a row. And again the Celtics couldn’t hold onto their lead.

“It’s inexcusable,” said Jaylen Brown. “But we’re going to learn from it. We’re going to respond.”

When the Celtics needed someone to rescue them on Wednesday, with the ice beneath their season cracking and New York gaining strength, Tatum fell short. He had a wide open corner 3-pointer to give the Celtics a nine-point lead with less than four minutes left. Back rim. He took a tough fadeaway over OG Anunoby two minutes later with Boston’s advantage down to one. Front rim. After the Knicks pulled ahead 89-86 with less than a minute left, Tatum did draw a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to one point and drive for a dunk that put the Celtics back ahead with 18.5 seconds left. But they failed to stay ahead. Jalen Brunson, who commandeered the fourth quarter, sank a pair of free throws with 12.7 seconds left after drawing a foul on Jrue Holiday.

Tatum had one mistake left. His worst of the night. The Celtics tried to run the same play that had just freed him for a dunk, but the Knicks defended it differently. Anunoby, back screened too close to half court the first time, backed up much further so Al Horford couldn’t screen him the same way again. Tatum tried to drive against Mitchell Robinson but ran straight into Anunoby’s help. With Mikal Bridges also converging, Tatum turned to throw a pass to Brown. Bridges ended the game by intercepting it and running out the rest of the clock.

Here’s the first play.

Tatum downhill vs Robinson. WAY too easy for him into the dunk. pic.twitter.com/7XXiKCrk7q

— Coach Gibson Pyper (@HalfCourtHoops) May 8, 2025

And the second.

TATUM DOESN’T GET THE SHOT OFF ‼️

KNICKS WIN GAME 2 🤯 pic.twitter.com/q8JH0dYKvU

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 8, 2025

“Just didn’t execute,” said Joe Mazzulla.

Mazzulla holstered his final timeout, declining to use it even after the play broke down for Tatum. The coach suggested he landed on that decision partly to keep one timeout in case the Celtics missed and needed to foul. Instead, they never got even one shot at the rim.

“You don’t know that at the point of JT was driving left, thought he had a good look at an angle, didn’t shoot it,” Mazzulla said. “Ran out of time.”

What would Tatum have said after the crushing loss? A look back to 2022 might help shed some light on his mentality. Back before the Celtics tore through last season’s playoffs for a championship, they constantly produced epic rises and falls within seemingly every series. When things went too right, the Celtics were about to fall apart. And when a situation looked impossible, that’s when they found their best.

In Game 5 of a 2022 second-round series against Milwaukee, the Celtics led by 14 points with 10 minutes left before cratering at home. After Giannis Antetokounmpo missed a free throw with 14.2 seconds left, Brown and Marcus Smart collided with each other, allowing Bobby Portis to score a go-ahead basket. The stunning loss left the Celtics needing to win two straight games, including one on the road, to knock off the defending champs. The Boston players couldn’t believe they had damaged themselves with so many self-inflicted wounds. Many of them simmered that night. Their season could have been lost.

Tatum emerged from the locker room with his usual steady demeanor.

“I could come up here and pout and be sad and I’m sure there would be a big story about how we’re defeated and I don’t believe in us,” Tatum said. “Or I could come in like, you can’t change what happened. It stings for sure, but it’s 3-2 and it’s the first to four. There’s no sense in being sad or putting your head down because that’s not going to do anything for next game. Always be optimistic and believe in yourself, believe in your group that we can win the game on Friday.”

Tatum scored 46 points in Game 6 to extend the series, which the Celtics won at home days later. Given the stakes and the opponent, the game still stands as likely the best he has ever played. On the road, he conquered the Bucks. He quieted a bloodthirsty crowd. When Milwaukee pulled close late, he answered with a string of clutch shots to send Boston back home for a Game 7. He wouldn’t let the Celtics lose an elimination game.

With their season now in danger, they need Tatum to put out the fire surrounding them one more time. After the way he dominated the Knicks throughout the regular season, averaging 33.5 points per game against them, Tatum was expected by most pundits to have a big series. Instead, after scoring 13 points in the first quarter of Game 1, he has scored just 23 points over the seven quarters since then.

Brunson, not Tatum, has controlled the fourth quarter of each game. The Knicks, not the Celtics, have played with championship poise. Tatum is shooting 28.6 percent over the first two games of the series, including 25 percent on 3-point attempts. In the two fourth quarters, he has combined to shoot 1 of 12 from the field while missing all seven 3-point attempts. Before turning the ball over on the final possession of Game 2, he missed four shots over the final two minutes of regulation in Game 1 that would have given the Celtics a lead. He didn’t score his only basket in overtime of that game until Boston was already down by six points.

By Game 3 on Saturday, Tatum needs to solve a Knicks defense that has limited the Celtics to their two lowest field-goal percentages of the entire season over the first two games of the series.

“I think Game 1 wasn’t inefficient, I thought he just missed some really good looks,” Mazzulla said. “I thought (in Game 2), he passed up some ones that he was able to take.”

Mazzulla never criticizes his players publicly. He didn’t mean the second line as a shot at Tatum. But how could it not be seen as one? With the Celtics trailing in a series for the first time since 2023, Mazzulla believed Tatum passed up shots he should have taken.

The Celtics became the first team in the play-by-play era (since 1996-97) to blow two 20-point leads in the same postseason – and they did it in back-to-back games. Over the rest of the series, Tatum needs to forget all the talk about how many 3-pointers the Celtics shoot and whether they should spend more time driving to the rim. He usually finds the right balance. The Celtics need him to do it for four wins in the next five games.

“Their switchability, their ability to impact shifts definitely impacted (Tatum in Game 2),” said Mazzulla. “So yeah, I thought he missed some easy layups in the beginning of the game. Thought he missed some, a couple there in the third quarter, but yeah, OG Anunoby’s a good individual defender, and they have good shifts and help behind.”

The Celtics need more from other players, too. As a team, they have shot just 25 percent on 3-point attempts so far this series. After taking a 16-point lead with 9:46 left in Game 2, they missed 15 of their next 16 field goal attempts.

In Game 2, Brown scored 20 points on 8-of-23 shooting with six turnovers. Al Horford missed all five of his 3-point attempts in an atypical 2-of-11 outing. Kristaps Porziņģis, who missed the second half of Game 1 with an illness, came off the bench for the first time all season in Game 2. After six scoreless first-half minutes, he looked gassed on the bench while clearly still dealing with symptoms. He believes they are related to the illness that sidelined him for eight consecutive games after the All-Star break.

“Probably, yeah,” Porziņģis said. “I’ve had, like, ups and downs throughout up until this point. Just now I had a big crash now, and my energy, my everything hasn’t been good, but who cares? I have to look forward and it’ll get better from this point on.”

Regardless of whether Porziņģis bounces back, the Celtics need Tatum to do so. He is stamped after winning a ring last season, but, for the greats, the pressure to deliver never stops. Two big performances in Madison Square Garden, a place he loves to play, would go a long way toward restoring the Celtics’ hope.

Helping their case, they have been dynamite on the road in recent years, losing just one game away from TD Garden on their way to a championship last season. This Knicks team has them flummoxed, but the Celtics have flown high on the back of desperation before.

“We’ve got a great group that has stayed together through it all,” Brown said. “So these are the moments where we need to show our resiliency, we need to show our mental toughness because we can get back in this thing, no question.”

The Celtics are in survival mode now. They need to salvage a season that is suddenly under seige. A second-round loss to these Knicks would be a debacle for Boston. News conference or not, Tatum’s real response will come in New York.

(Photo: David Butler II-Imagn Images)

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