Knicks again discover it's not easy beating green
Karl-Anthony Towns of the Knicks works Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics during the second quarter at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Nope, this was not the statement game the Knicks wanted.
Nope, this was not their night to show a national television audience that they are an Eastern Conference power to be reckoned with, a team that has improved to the point that they can challenge the defending NBA champions.
The only statement made Saturday night at Madison Square Garden was this: Jayson Tatum is an incredible player whom the Knicks have absolutely no answer for. What other conclusion can you come to after watching Tatum score 40 points to lead the Celtics to a 131-104 win over what had been a red-hot Knicks team?
Tatum, who scored 37 points in Boston’s season-opening 132-109 drubbing of the Knicks in October, opened the game with a driving dunk and continued to shred the Knicks’ defense throughout the game. He led his team’s three-point barrage by going 7-for-14 from beyond the arc and scored 19 points in the third quarter as the Celtics took over again after having their 18-point lead cut to three.
“It’s not personal,” Tatum said after the win when asked why he plays so well against the Knicks. “The first game was opening night. Tonight we were trying to bounce back from a loss [against Dallas] the other night.”
Bounce back they did. On a night when it was swirling snow outside of Madison Square Garden, it was raining Boston threes inside of it. All told, the Celtics have shot 48-for-100 from three-point range in their two meetings with the Knicks this season.
The win increased the second-place Celtics’ lead over the third-place Knicks to 2 1⁄2 games.
“You learn from every game,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s the disappointment of a loss. We have to make sure we learn from it. And then obviously, we have to take a hard look and get better.”
The loss was deflating, given that the Knicks thought they had a chance to avenge the thrashing they suffered in Boston at the start of the season. That loss had ruined the debuts of the Knicks’ two shiny new starters, Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges.
Since the opener, the Celtics have not been as overpowering this season as one might have predicted. While the Cavaliers have been in first place in the conference since charging out of the gate with 15 straight wins, the Celtics’ grasp on second place has been tenuous at best. They lost on Thursday to an undermanned Dallas team that was missing both Luka Doncic, whom they had sent to the Lakers, and new addition Anthony Davis.
Meanwhile, the Knicks got to know one another, and there’s little doubt that the team that entered Saturday is much better than the one that entered the season. They sure didn’t show it, though. The Knicks not only were hammered 48-30 on the boards but couldn’t keep up offensively despite getting 36 points from Jalen Brunson.
Towns and Bridges again were particularly ineffective. Towns, who had a sore knee and was unsure he would play until 30 minutes before the game, might have played his worst game as a Knick, scoring a season-low nine points and shooting 3-for-8. Bridges, who was one of the primary defenders on Tatum, was held to 11 points and 5-for-15 shooting.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, simple as that,” Towns said. “There’s no sugarcoating, there’s no moral wins, this is something we’ve got to work on . . . We’ve got to find a way to beat teams like tonight.”
What the Knicks (34-18) have to do is find a way to beat good teams, period.
Entering Saturday, they had won seven of eight and had gone 29-11 since their 5-6 start, but they have struggled against teams who have a shot at winning it all. They are 1-5 against the four teams that have better records than they do.
This loss, however, may have been their hardest of the season. Tatum is a player who has the Knicks’ number. And until they can find a way to counter that, any dream of being a contender is simply that: just a dream.
Said Brunson: “Today as a whole was unacceptable.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
