Inside Knicks’ biggest win in 25 years as Jalen Brunson, New York finish off Celtics at Madison Square Garden

NEW YORK — Leading up to Game 6 of the New York Knicks‘ second-round series against the Boston Celtics on Friday, the stakes were high. A Knicks win would mean advancing to the conference finals for the first time in 25 years. A loss would mean returning to Boston for a Game 7 that the Knicks wanted to avoid at all costs. After going up 3-1 and watching the Celtics’ best player get carried off the floor with a with a torn Achilles, they were far from the underdogs that they were two weeks ago. If they couldn’t finish this version of Boston off, there could be major changes coming.

Given those stakes, the game itself was anticlimactic: Tight for eight minutes, then absolute annihilation. The Knicks went on what seemed like a little spurt late in the first quarter, then they ran away with the game and sealed the series. They led by 27 points at halftime and as many as 41 in their 119-81 victory, the most lopsided playoff win in franchise history. 

Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla pulled his starters late in the third quarter. During the fourth, the delirious crowd at Madison Square Garden chanted veteran forward P.J. Tucker’s name multiple times before Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau did the same. Unlike New York’s seven previous wins this postseason, there was no drama, no tension, no crazy comeback, no need for crunch-time heroics.

On the way to their postgame press conference, the Knicks’ Josh Hart showed teammate Mikal Bridges a video of fans climbing lampposts outside of the Garden.

“Yeah, it’s crazy, man,” Bridges, who joined the team last offseason in a blockbuster trade with the Brooklyn Nets, said. “Obviously I’m new here, but I just know how much New York loves their sports and especially the Knicks, so just so excited to be a part of it.”

It was the team’s most significant win in a quarter-century. Asked if the players were aware of how long it had been since the franchise had won two rounds in the playoffs, guard Miles McBride said: “I don’t even know if I was alive. But it’s something New York deserves.” Informed that it was 2000, he smiled at the realization that he was born a few months after the Knicks’ last conference finals appearance. 

“That’s craaazy,” McBride said.

Four of New York’s starters — Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Bridges — scored between 21 and 23 points. Hart had a 10-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist triple-double. McBride added 10 points off the bench, and reserve big man Mitchell Robinson, as he did all series, made his presence felt on defense and on the offensive glass. “I thought we had a really balanced attack,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. For this iteration of the Knicks, it was the platonic ideal of a win — their defense was disciplined, they dominated the glass, they were elite offensively and Brunson only had to attempt 14 shots. 

In between the Knicks’ 127-102 loss at TD Garden on Wednesday and the clincher on Friday, they had a meeting. “We just refocused, honestly,” McBride said. They talked about the need to communicate better on defense, especially in transition.

“I feel like we just watched the film and I think we were kind of disgusted with our communication, our effort, our sense of urgency to start the game,” Hart said. “So that’s something that we knew we had to fix.”

Brunson said that they knew that Game 5 “wasn’t us,” and they were prepared to show that. At TD Garden, Boston pushed the pace, played in flow and, without Tatum, manufactured easy buckets through ball movement and timely cuts. At MSG two days later, New York was much more locked in on the Celtics’ off-ball actions. From late in the first quarter onward, it was able to “get stops, run and play Knick basketball,” Hart said. And for the first time in the series, the team was able to build a comfortable lead, rather than having to play from behind.

 “It was time,” McBride said. “It was time for us to play with the lead and play tough with the lead, be the more physical team and outlast ’em.”

In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on Wednesday, New York will host the Indiana Pacers, who ousted them from the playoffs in the second round last season. Indiana will test the Knicks’ depth, test their defense and do everything they can to wear them down. The Pacers have improved, particularly on defense, but the Knicks have more firepower than they did last season, and much more firepower than they did when they were banged up and beaten down at the very end of it.  

“It’s going to be a tough opponent,” Hart said. “They push the pace. They run on makes, misses. I know it’s going to be a huge communication series for us. We’re going to have to be locked in on every possession. We’re going to have to get back defensively. So, you know, we can build off this game. I feel like our defensive transition, our communication was great today, and that’s something that we can carry into that series.”

Towns said that New York’s first-round series against the Detroit Pistons showed that “we’re able to finish games in the fourth quarter” and the series against Boston was “a testament to these guys never, ever not believing that we’re going to win a game regardless of how the game is going and regardless of the ebbs and flows of a playoff series or a game.” Both series were a bit rocky, but they finished this one with by far their most complete performance of the playoffs. To win like that, in this spot, is a monumental achievement in itself. It has been quite some team since the Knicks have done anything like it.