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    • Celtics appear ready to do it again, take down the Knicks
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    Celtics appear ready to do it again, take down the Knicks

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    Celtics

    Boston tied an NBA record for most three-pointers made, digging into the shell-shocked Knicks on defense from the jump.

    Celtics appear ready to do it again, take down the Knicks

    Al Horford grabs a rebound vs. the Knicks. Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe

    The Celtics were the best team in the NBA by a wide margin last season, and they opened their 2024-2025 season with a 132-109 win over the Knicks.

    Here are the takeaways.

    1. There’s a lot of talk about the Celtics’ three-point shooting and their well-balanced roster, but we may not talk enough about how mentally tough they’ve been over the past two seasons.

    One of the more understandable losses a team can suffer is ring night after winning a championship. Emotions run high before the game starts, and the team gets to celebrate the culmination of last year’s work one last time before embarking on a new season. They get rings. They raise a banner. They give speeches to loud applause.

    Then the lights come back on, the smoke clears, the banner is rolled away, the layup lines resume, and shortly thereafter a basketball game begins against a good opponent who has just spent the last 45 minutes watching a rival be crowned. Ring Night isn’t a schedule loss, but it is a tough match.

    On Tuesday, the Celtics immediately punched the Knicks in the mouth. They had Jrue Holiday guard Karl-Anthony Towns. They treated Jalen Brunson like they treat Trae Young (and Tyrese Haliburton and Tyler Herro and Luka Doncic and a bunch of other scoring guards who can’t defend any of the Celtics’ starters one-on-1). They created so many open three-pointers that when their starters left the game in the fourth quarter, the bench had a chance to make three-point history (more on this in a moment).

    Their defense has been particularly nasty – notice how Jrue Holiday floats from assignment to assignment here, preventing the Knicks from targeting Luke Kornet in the pick-and-roll.

    “The biggest thing I’m proud of is the mentality of the guys,” Mazzulla said. “We weren’t stuck before. We were able to transition from what got us to where we were, to where we are trying to get to with the intangibles.”

    The Celtics are a championship-quality team talent-wise, and the ring ceremony was a great reminder of that quality. But they also have a championship mentality that will serve them well as they turn it around.

    As Tatum put it after receiving his first championship ring, “Let’s do it again.”

    2. And speaking of Tatum, he opened his season with one of the better regular-season performances of his career: 37 points on 14-for-18 shooting and 10 assists.

    The scoop in his shot has completely disappeared. In its place is a perfect jumper that he can easily let fly on both the catch and the dribble. When the Knicks went under screens, he burned them in the pick-and-roll. When they got caught going there, he burned them in the pick-and-roll too.

    Perhaps the wildest play of the game came in the second half when the Celtics swung the ball to a wide-open Tatum, who made the baffling decision not to shoot. Tatum waited for Jericho to block Sims and then dribbled for an iso-triple. He canned it.

    Tatum won’t shoot 8-for-11 from three the rest of the way. But he looks comfortable and confident, both as a newly crowned champion and as the proud owner of a new jump shot.

    “Tatum is going to be a problem,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “He’s a great player. You have to guard him with your team.”

    Guarding him with your team is of course also how Tatum gets 10 assists.

    He may not be the favorite, but don’t write off his MVP chances just yet.

    3. As Mazzulla walked out to receive his championship ring, he bent down and kissed the parquet floor.

    How did it taste?

    “Blood? Maybe I wish it was,” said Mazzulla.

    And what did he think of the ring?

    “I don’t know,” he said somewhat dismissively. “This thing is too big. I don’t know… why is it so big? I’m never going to wear it. But it’s cool to have.”

    However, he appreciated the banner.

    “They represent so much,” he said. “The banner was the highlight for me because it represents many things that are in it, and the trusses have a life of their own in this building. So that moment was the coolest.”

    4. Mazzulla may find the rings a bit big, but they certainly look great.

    “That ring is just an object, right?” said Jaylen Brown. “But it’s everything, the emotions, the heartbreak, the shame, the work, the drive, the dedication, like that’s what that ring represents, you know what I mean?”

    5. The Knicks have a lot of time to figure themselves out, but for a team that seems to be trying to recreate what the Celtics have, they have a glaring weakness: not one, but two defensive ends in their starting lineup with Brunson and Steden. The Celtics have zero defensive holes in their starting lineup, which is quietly one of the biggest reasons why they are so strong.

    6. The Celtics made 17 three-pointers in the first half, tying the NBA record for most three-pointers in a game with 8:54 left. Waste time was about to follow, which meant big minutes for Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser. The record seemed all but assured.

    Then the Celtics went ice cold. Brown missed twice. Xavier Tillman missed. Pritchard and Hauser missed three combined 3-pointers on one possession. The crowd begged the team to break the record (and the players were clearly aware that they were on the brink of history), but Pritchard very respectfully dribbled away the shot clock in the final minute without attempting another, and the Celtics had to settle for a record 29 three-pointers (and 12 consecutive misses in the final eight minutes). Ultimately, the Celtics attempted 61 triples and shot 47.5 percent from deep (29-for-49 for 59 percent if you omit the last 12 shots).

    Brown summed it up succinctly: “Once the crowd got in and we started chasing them, we couldn’t even hit the broad side of the barn. Everything was turned off. We got a lot of great looks and it was like a lid on the basket. So that shows that we are not a team that chases threes. We play the game and we do what we have to do, but I think it was difficult towards the end because we didn’t play the way we normally play.”

    7. As a team, the Celtics finished with 10 times more assists (33) and twice as many steals (six) than turnovers (3).

    8. Al Horford started and played 30 minutes, while Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman split 15 and 17 minutes, respectively. There was a lot of talk in the preseason about the potential of the Kornet start, but that seems to have quickly disappeared.

    Horford finished with 11 points on 4-for-7 shooting (3-for-5 from three).

    9. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were all in the building, and Bob Cousy also showed up.

    “I didn’t see Bob Cousy play, but I remember the Celtics winning a championship in 2008,” Tatum said. “I was just ten years old. I watched Ray, Paul and KG, I grew up watching those guys, and it was like it came full circle for them to come back and share that moment with us and pass the torch or whatever that symbolized.

    “I’m still a fan of those guys. They are part of my childhood. So that was an incredible moment, when I was discussing it with them, KG was shouting in my ear and I was like, ‘I’m actually talking to Kevin Garnett right now.’ I never take those moments for granted. I still think it’s still cool to be a part of stuff like that.

    10. Next up for the champs: The Celtics head to Washington to play the Wizards on Thursday before traveling to Detroit to take on the Pistons on Saturday.

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