Knicks lose to Celtics again, drop to 0-5 against East's elite teams 

BOSTON — The Knicks had a week off through the All-Star festivities to plan and focus — and prove the critics wrong — as they prepared for a weekend of challenges against the two teams above them in the Eastern Conference standings.

Time to game plan. Time to prepare. Time to heal.

And after Sunday afternoon’s game at TD Garden, the Knicks had to explain away how the offseason rebuild, the hype and hope, has left them far short of the elite teams in the NBA.

A 37-point loss in Cleveland Friday night was Exhibit A. And not long after the tipoff Sunday, the Knicks found themselves trailing by double digits. They fell behind by as many as 27 before losing to the Celtics, 118-105.

That left the Knicks 0-3 against Boston, 0-5 against the top two teams in the Eastern Conference and 0-7 against the top three teams in the NBA, if you throw in Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City. And all they could do was grasp for glimmers of hope, moments of bright spots, as they head down the stretch while clinging to the belief that in the postseason, it could be different.

“That’s for y’all,” Josh Hart said of the struggles against the top teams. “I mean, y’all going to sit there and dissect the game, and that’s your job. For us, we’re not trying to close a gap with the Boston Celtics. They’re the champs for a reason. They got All-NBA guys, they got All-Stars, they got a heck of a team. So we’re not trying to close the gap on them. We’re trying to make sure we get ourselves to where we need to be at the end of the year, and right now, we’re not there.”

This time, at least the Knicks didn’t let go of the rope. After Jayson Tatum’s three-pointer with 8:20 left in the third quarter gave the Celtics a 77-50 lead, the Knicks got back in the game.

Jalen Brunson had 15 points and Karl-Anthony Towns added 14 in the Knicks’ 39-point third period, and Towns’ three-pointer 28 seconds into the fourth quarter brought the Knicks within 89-85.

But nearly as quickly as they fought back, they found themselves falling apart again. Jaylen Brown and Derrick White scored six points each as the Celtics immediately responded with a 16-4 run that put them ahead 105-89, and they extended their lead to 21 at 118-97.

“It just looked like the other games and then we finally came in at halftime and decided to be the team we needed to be against this team,” Towns said. “I thought we put ourselves in a good position to get back in the game to win. We just came up short.”

“Whatever we did in the first, second and fourth quarter doesn’t really matter,” Brunson said. “The third quarter, what we showed was how we can play and how we can compete . . . I don’t really care what’s going on; the way we stepped up in the third is how we should play.

“We just had a level of not really caring anymore. Just all right, we’ve got to go somehow. I mean, from my point of view, that’s what it felt like . . . Just try to find a way to win. We’ve done it in the past against other teams, but it’s the first time we did it against this team. We can do it, but we have to do it for four quarters.”

Towns finished with 24 points and 18 rebounds. Brunson had 22 points and Hart added 20 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists for the Knicks (37-20).

“It’s great to have something to look back on and see what was successful against a great team, the defending champions,” Towns said. “But there’s no moral victories in this, especially for us being in New York. We have to get the job done. We’ll learn. We’ll have to be better.”

Tatum had 25 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists for the Celtics (41-16). Brown added 24 points and White had 19.

The game may have been put away for good in a sequence in which Kristaps Porzingis delivered a one-handed slam of a lob and Towns missed a dunk and then came down awkwardly. He hobbled to the bench as the Knicks called timeout after Brown scored with Towns not making it back on defense. Down 101-89, he went to the bench and briefly to the locker room with 8:28 remaining.

Boston pushed the lead to 18, and with 4:12 remaining, Towns came back into the game, still clearly favoring the left knee. He played the rest of the way.

“We’ll just see how the next couple days go. Time will tell,” he said. “They wanted me to [go to the locker room to be examined]. I just wanted to get a walk in and come back.

“I always want to play. My teammates are out there fighting and I’m going to go out there and fight with them.”

Notes & quotes: The Knicks not only have gone 0-7 against the Celtics, Cavaliers and Thunder, but in five of those losses, they fell behind by 42 points against Cleveland, 35, 35 and 27 against Boston and 30 against Oklahoma City.

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.