The apocalypse is now for the Eastern Conference.
Now ascendant, the Boston Celtics have begun their coercive crackdown on contenders and pretenders alike. The New York Knicks, perhaps the only team in the East with the talent to do something about this, were embarrassed by Boston on opening night. Is there any hope?
In their active offseason, acquiring both Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks were planting the seeds of revolt against the Celtics. Their rallying cries sounded “Size! Shooting! Defensive Switchability!” as they tried to drag the rest of the conference into the future the Celtics had already found. But it’s not looking good for the movement.
It will take time for these pieces to gel together. Last season, the Knicks were a fairly talented team elevated by chemistry and coherence. Towns and Bridges will have to get with the program before they can light this popsicle stand into a revolution.
But it’s going to be a hard road, because Tuesday night showed them that the Celtics aren’t some sort of political dictator, they’re just a math teacher, and handed the Knicks this open-response question for homework:
“How do you beat a team that makes 29 of 61 threes in a game?”
Answer: you don’t. It is impossible. The Knicks had no chance. They shot an excellent 55 percent from the field, and they still got blown out even worse than the box score reflected — the Celtics spent the last six minutes of the game missing 13-straight threes trying to break the single-game record. The Knicks were an Enlightenment philosopher, explaining gravity with metaphysics and friendship. The Celtics were Isaac Newton, throwing down the gauntlet of Calculus and straight facts.
If this is the zombie apocalypse, it wasn’t sent by God. It was sent by Joe Mazzulla after he synthesized the virus by inventing some new math called “Togrosofography” and discovering four new elements. But it’s still science, not magic. How can the Knicks fight against it?
The answer isn’t “time,” though that is certainly going to help. But there is a difference between a team needing time to come together and actually having the right schematic answers. Can the ideal version of this team handle these Celtics? And can it handle the ideal Celtics, once Kristaps Porzingis comes back?
First and foremost, they’re going to have to give themselves a chance by shooting a lot of threes. The 30 they shot on Tuesday is not going to cut it, against the Celtics or anyone. Last season, one of the through-lines between high-performing teams was percent of points generated from beyond the arc. The Celtics are the best at it, but there’s no reason the Knicks can’t be top-10 or even top-5. Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are great shooters, and Josh Hart and OG Anunoby have made a career out of corner threes. Mikal Bridges is not as bad as his shot form looks.
Another subject to monitor in the scoring department is free throws. Brunson makes bank from the charity stripe, as has Towns during his career, but combined for only four free throws on Tuesday. It’s no longer a given that NBA referees are going to put up with the James Harden-esque swipe-through as much as they have in the past, and the Celtics are one of the few teams with the physical profile to defend elite creators like Brunson and Towns without fouling. Thankfully, officiating is (ideally) a double-edged sword, and Jayson Tatum isn’t nearly as effective when he can’t get to the line around eight times per game. Unless you’re the Harden-Embiid 76ers, free throws won’t make or break the Knicks.
How about defense? Can the Knicks actually prevent Boston from scoring with the apocalyptic volume they’re capable of? Probably not, but they can definitely try harder than most teams. The Knicks are an outrageously scrappy group, made up almost entirely of guys who would dive into a burning building to get a loose ball. They also have crazy length with Anunoby and Bridges, and thus are uniquely equipped to run Boston’s shooters off the line. Staying locked onto shooters when they don’t have the ball is worth giving up lots of room in the middle, since a well timed cut and a perfect pass is a lot harder to execute than a catch and shoot three. The Knicks will have to play recklessly, but that will conversely force Boston to play a different type of game.
It’s not like the Celtics only shoot threes; they obliterated Towns on switches and exploited his lack of elite foot-speed when defending the pick-and-roll. They won’t be able to hide him, but that’s something the Knicks are going to have to live with
New York could also just let them shoot and “hope they miss,” which has worked for teams in the past but isn’t statistically likely to work over time. The Mavericks triple-teamed Tatum in the Finals and dared guys like Derrick White and Sam Hauser to hit shots, which they did. The Knicks will have to trust their wing defenders on the Celtics’ stars and deny the ball to shooters they want a chance.
It’s easy to see this as a hopeless situation, but it’s not. With both teams at full strength — and Boston is still a much better health bet than New York — the Celtics will always have the upper hand. But the Knicks have a schematic route to victory that other teams don’t have access to: shoot more threes, get to the line and deny shooters airspace on the catch. They have the physical profile to succeed, even if last night looked like the end was on its way and nothing could stop it.
Listen, I get that this plan is sound but flimsy as hell, and like any group of upstart revolutionaries, they’re still going to be the underdogs even if they have carved themselves a chance. They’re going to need luck, lots of it, to succeed when the freight train of history seems primed to run them over. But they have a roadmap to succeed, something 13 other teams would kill for. Will they? Probably not. Can they? Absolutely.
