NEW YORK — A lot of people have spent the past couple of days dancing on a hastily dug grave for the Boston Celtics. The Celtics weren’t just dead, they were reincarnated and killed again after two brutal losses at home to a Knicks team that wasn’t expected to sniff more than a token win.
“I didn’t get into the journey for it to be easy,” Joe Mazzulla said. “It’s been dark, but in a good way.”
If there's anything Mazzulla loves, it’s a challenge. Of the 100 men fighting the gorilla, Mazzulla is the first in line and the most excited to see where it goes. Unbridled success is boring to him, even though it’s the one thing fans crave the most. So while the world around him devolved into calls for his head, he demanded his team use the negativity.
“You’ve got to tap into your darkness,” he said. “We’ve got to do it. That’s it.”
That's one way to characterize what the Celtics did on Saturday afternoon in Manhattan.
Madison Square Garden was full of electricity. The crowd buzzed during the national anthem, hooting and hollering, unable to contain their excitement. They were ready for their Knicks to land their penultimate move, setting up their finisher to put the fraudulent Celtics out of their misery.
But Boston did what they couldn't do in their first two games. They hit shots.
“They were 20-for-40 from 3,” Jalen Brunson said after the game. “There’s not a lot that I can say.”
Brunson wasn’t the only one at a loss for words. The dark demons in green quickly silenced the Knicks crowd. The most they could muster after Boston’s six first-quarter triples and 16-point lead was angry demands like “do something!” By the second half, even the fake noise meter was ineffective in getting the Knicks faithful out of their seats.
“All the work you put in all year adds up to these moments,” Jaylen Brown said. “When it's not going in our direction. We don't complain. We got to find ways to win, dig deep, stay together as a group and come out and perform.”
The Celtics hit 3-pointers they didn’t hit in Games 1 or 2. They made defensive stops they couldn't at home. They stopped Knicks runs in their tracks by hitting timely shots, working the ball around, and knocking down whichever shot was open.
For whatever reason, the Celtics have
