Well, that was something.
What it was, it was a massacre. Spanking. Gobble. It was threshing and threshing. It was beating and beating, bloodshed and beating. Indeed, it would have been eye-opening and gut-wrenching if there was loyalty to the team wearing the white uniforms rather than the team wearing the green uniforms.
It was Celtics 132, Knicks 109 at TD Garden in Boston. It could have been much, much worse if the Knicks hadn't waved the white flag that the Celtics accepted, only after poking the Knicks in the eye. A few more times. This looked like a buying game in college, with the Knicks taking .500 Large to hand over their heads on Homecoming Day.
The Celtics raised the flag and put down the hammer.
“We've got to be a lot better defensively than we were before,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the carnage. “There was some indecision. When you play a team like that, you have to scramble. One effort isn't enough, you need a second, third, fourth effort. And But they still have the ability to do it.”
I will do that. At one notable point in the second half, the Knicks were shooting 59.1 percent from the field compared to 58 percent for the Knicks. The Celtics led 99-70.
No, this wasn't exactly what Thibs wanted. This is certainly not what Leon Rose envisioned when he created his roster with the express purpose of better matching up with the Celtics. After opening night, this was “The Moose Murders.” If you're not a Broadway trivia expert, trust me or Google it. This was that bad.
It also reminded me of the famous final scene in The Candidate, where Robert Redford's incoming Sen. Bill McKay pulls Peter Boyle's Marvin Lucas into his hotel room and asks him, “What are you going to do now?”
Well, at least Thibodeau was able to muster more teaching moments in those 48 minutes than he had in the entire preseason. Look, the Celtics are the gold standard in the NBA right now. They are the defending champions, even without Kristaps Porzingis, and are the first to be complete and intact as champions since at least the 2004-05 Pistons.
Knicks? In comparison, they are still getting to know each other. They're still in the bonding stage, and Tuesday night's team-building study was about how together they watched 29 of the Celtics' first 48 3-pointers go. did. Some of them were open. Most were contested. And each time, you could see the light fade in Knicks' eyes.
(The moment the Celtics tied an NBA record with their 29th three-pointer with just under nine minutes left, they missed their final 13 shots of the game and the crowd begged for one more to reach the record.) (It was almost laughable) On their final possession, Boston coach Joe Mazzula ordered them to take a knee. Like I said, almost laughable. )
“The NBA needs to drug test them,” Josh Hart joked after the game. What else can I say? “I've never seen anything like this before.”
This is where you start. Look for fine positive reeds growing out of mud or slopes. Deuce McBride, for example, scored 22 points on 8-for-10 off the bench, just like we remember from his best night last spring. Karl-Anthony Towns was limited just 24 minutes after the game got out of hand and showed why he's been a hot topic all year.
Perhaps most essentially, there was the second half of Mikal Bridges. Bridges missed all five of his shots in the first half, looking like a putter with severe yips every time he raised his arm to take a shot. However, in the second run, he hit 7 of 8 and 2 of 3. The game had already been scheduled, but he was playing against the Celtics' starter. That was something.
It's a long season, yes. Granted, it's a long time before the key months of April, May, and June. Only one loss counts, which is exactly the same as a four-overtime gut punch. There's no room for debate.
But I'm also a little worried. How could that be? The Knicks believed they had made progress toward at least closing the gap on the Celtics. And they still might. But for now, after one game against the Celtics where he wanted to see what he was capable of, he received a diagnosis that left him with pain everywhere, including his head, heart, eyes, ears and esophagus.
It was a long night. Fortunately for the Knicks, this season is long.
