The Boston Celtics, to a greater degree than any team in NBA history, embody the “live by the 3, die by the 3” mantra. For the most part, the reigning champs live damn well. But man, did they die in historic fashion on Monday night, dropping Game 1 in overtime to New York Knicks, 108-105, while clanking an NBA playoff record 45 missed 3-pointers.
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. The Celtics missed 45 of their 60 3-point attempts, both of which are playoff records. They led by 20 points halfway through the third quarter, but instead of looking for other ways to score when the Knicks started to make their push, the Celtics attempted just 12 2-point shots the entire second half and overtime.
“I thought for the most part we fought for good looks throughout the game,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said of Boston’s shot selection. “…To me, I look at the shot quality. Our shot quality was high. …There’s probably eight to 10 shots that we can be better at.”
There’s some truth to this. The Celtics definitely settled for some lazy looks, particularly as the game got tight, but bombing 3s, whether self-created or off the catch, is what the Celtics do, and given their stable of capable marksmen the numbers almost always play out in their favor. They’re not all going to be wide-open looks, but some of them were and had the Celtics made even a couple more of the ones they usually make, they win this game.
But they didn’t, and on the other side the Knicks did, cashing in 17 3s at a 45.9% clip. With Boston finishing at 25% from 3 for the game, that 20% efficiency disparity marks what has, for the entirety of this season, been an insurmountable gap.
Literally. Per CBS Sports research, this regular season there were 98 games in which one team made 3s at at least a 20% better clip then their opponent, and those teams were 98-0. It’s happened five times so far in the playoffs, and again, the teams with the 20% better clip from 3 are 5-0.
Call it shooting luck, or bad luck, depending on how you look at it, but the simple truth is the Celtics play a very one-dimensional style. Again, over time, the math is almost always too exponential to beat. But for one night, in the playoffs especially, a typically stable 3-point team needs a plan B if it goes cold.
The Celtics didn’t — and for the most part don’t — have a plan B. Jayson Tatum was freezing cold down the stretch and just kept doubling his bet thinking one would pay off. It never happened. He finished a paltry 4-of-15 from 3 and missed all five of his fourth-quarter triples.
Jaylen Brown went 1 for 10. Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Al Horford missed 20 combined 3s. It wouldn’t be right to not credit the Knicks for a decent chunk of this. The Knicks built their team specifically for this series, to be able to match up with the Celtics’ unending roster of wings with a bunch of their own long, switchable, two-way wings (plus a superstar scorer and a stretch-shooting big man). And for at least one night, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and OG Anunoby made Leon Rose look like a genius.
New York’s defense was not good this season and it could still end up crushed under an avalanche of Boston 3s as this series progresses. But this is a one-game-at-a-time situation, and for this one game, New York was able to cut off Boston’s driving lanes and still recover back out to contest Boston’s shooters in a meaningful way.
It cannot be overstated how hard New York’s wings played. Sometimes it doesn’t matter because the other team makes a bunch of contested shots anyway. But it’s all you can do, and in Game 1 the extra efforts paid off. Look at Bridges, who played 51 minutes, still having the energy to make these kinds of plays in overtime.
For the Knicks, if ever there was a beat-Boston blueprint, this was it. Defend the 3-point line to the best of your ability, hope Boston has an off night, let Jalen Brunson be the best player on the floor (which he most definitely was on Monday, finishing with 29 points and five 3-pointers while running absolute circles around the Celtics down the stretch), and then get one more wingman offensive showing. In Game 1, that was Anunoby with 29 points, including 11 in the fourth quarter and OT when it felt like the game was swinging on every possession.
Will the Knicks be able to repeat this performance? Again, this is what they designed their team for, and they didn’t really do anything in this game that they shouldn’t be able to replicate. The question is, will the Celtics continue to misfire from 3. And if they do, will they eventually come up with a plan B?