The Knicks began their 2024-25 regular season on Tuesday night with a clear understanding of what will be required to reach the NBA Finals: getting through the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics.
The longtime Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference rivals met up in Boston on the night the Celtics received their championship rings and raised the franchise’s NBA record 18th league title banner to the TD Garden rafters. It was conclusively a Celtics all-night celebration as they thoroughly outplayed the Knicks in winning 132-109.
While such a lopsided loss for the Knicks was unexpected, a defeat in the first game with new major additions to their starting lineup in center Karl-Anthony Towns and forward Mikal Bridges, it is understandable. The Knicks will have much better days over the next six months and 81 regular season games remaining, but Tuesday they had a firsthand look at the standard they’ll have to match and exceed to reach their ultimate goal.
The Knicks will have another test tomorrow night as the Indiana Pacers, the team that eliminated them in the Eastern Conference Finals last season, visit Madison Square Garden. But the Celtics, if they can remain healthy, are the benchmark for the rest of the league. They tied an NBA single-game record with 29 three-pointers made on 61 attempts despite missing 13 in a row at one point in the fourth quarter. Their absurdly high three-point attempts are in line with the new age of the NBA in which most teams aim to put up at least 50 per game.
All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson, along with spark plug “Deuce” McBride, led the Knicks with 22 points apiece. Towns had 12 points and seven rebounds and Bridges had 16. But it was a porous defense that was the obvious problem as Boston was able to get what they wanted in scoring 74 first-half points to the Knicks’ 55.
“Defensively, obviously, we’ve got to be a lot better than we were,” said Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau via the AP news service. “They put a lot of pressure on you. … Sometimes the initial shot we were able to get to, then the (rebound) went long over our heads.”
“They tied an NBA record in 3s,” New York guard Josh Hart said. “You have like three to four games a year where the team shoots the ball at an absurd clip, and sometimes there’s not much you can do about it.
“…The NBA needs to drug test all of them,” Hart joked. “I’ve never ever seen nothing like that before.”
Following the Pacers, the Knicks will host the Cleveland Cavaliers at MSG on Monday, followed by a four-game road trip beginning with the Miami Heat next Wednesday.