The most surprising series of the second round of the NBA playoffs so far is between the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks.
After the Celtics won the four games between the two teams in the regular season, with an average 16.3-point victory margin, the Knicks have run to a 2-0 advantage in their postseason confrontation. New York not only won two games on the way to start the series, the Knicks returned from 20 -point deficits in the second halves of both games.
How is all this happening? Andrew Greif and Rohan Nadkarni of NBC News break down the series so far, and what to wait to advance.
Did the Knicks won the first two games or the Celtics blew it?
Nadkarni: The real answer is that it is a combination of both. At the same time, if we are dividing the responsibility cake, the Celtics deserve more contempt for blowing the first two games.
In a nutshell, Boston has made only 25 of his 100 attempts of 3 points in this series. If the Celtics were shooting only 30%, which would still be well below their regular season average and, with much, the worst of any team in the NBA, they probably upload 2-0 in this series. I don’t want to be too reductive and say “shooting” … but also, take some shots!
GREIF: This is Boston’s ruin, because although the Knicks have played with an undeniable resolution of all the postseason, multiple returns secured their first -round victory against Detroit, they have also been undoubtedly defective.
Game 2 was the worst offensive game in New York of its season, as measured by points scored by possession, and it was not exactly a shock for a team that scores 10 points less for every 100 possessions in the playoffs than during the regular season. That is a great fall, even when it counts the seemingly annual trend to score fall in the playoffs. However, the Knicks have given Boston two losses in a series for the first time since 2023, anyway.
Who is the culprit that Celtics are down 2-0?
GREIF: Execution of poor quality of the late game that all assume them. Boston has yielded 11 more goals, has obtained only 15 percent of his triples and recorded a little rotation ratio of 6 to 5 in the fourth quarter.
With 18 seconds in game 2, the coach of the Celtics, Joe Mazzulla, designed an intelligent work for the free star Jays Tatum for a complete sprint that became an easy overturned and an advantage of 90-89. But needing another feed basket in the final possession of the game, Mazzulla was exactly the same play and the Knicks were not deceived. Tatum is shooting only 1 of 12 in the fourth quarter of this series, while its co -star Jaylen Brown is 1 by 7.
Nadkarni: The money has to stop with the best players in Boston, Tatum and Brown. Tatum is shooting less than 30% from the field in this series, and Brown is not going much better, shooting less than 40%. They have been inefficient, too happy of 3 points, and they are not making good decisions in time.
Tatum especially needs to intensify. Not because it is not great, not because I have to show that it is a superstar, but because it has already shown all these things. Tatum is an incredibly made playoff artist, and has had some big games at incredibly high -risk moments. You wouldn’t know this series.
Can Knicks continue like this?
Nadkarni: Almost definitely not, but they don’t have to do it either. There is no rule that you have to win each game of a series of four games in the same way. Even if Celtics start hitting 3s, that does not mean that Knicks cannot win this series.
I do not hope that New York continues to win in the way he did in the first two games. It would be irresponsible to assume that any team can continue to create 20 -point deficits in the playoffs and win again every time. So I do not think that the Knicks formula of the first two games is repeatable (although somehow they repeated it after game 1), but that does not mean they do not have other ways to win.
GREIF: This is fundamentally a matter of what the most trust. Is it a sample size of two games that has seen the Knicks become a monster in Crunch’s time? In fourth quarter, this series, New York has made nine triples, while Boston has made nine shots in total, or his body of evidence of the whole season, which saw New York qualified only around the average league average in “clutch” stages?
And do you see the Knicks, who now have 6-2 in the postseason against the 44-38 Pistons and 61-21 Celtics, as finally equipped to overcome good teams, or the team that was only 15-23 against teams with winning records during the regular season? They have captured the lighting in a bottle and, nevertheless, it still seems that the Celtics have a greater margin of error.
What is the path of Celtics to win the series?
GREIF: Regression to the average. Boston’s strategy to shoot many, many triples is nothing new, but they have rarely been so bad about that. When the radio station of the Celtics is large, it fell into the numbers, discovered that games 1 and 2 marked only the second time in the last six years that the team had gone to consecutive games shooting 25% or worse from 3. Does that shooting really hold a complete series?
The other trend is worth seeing is that Boston has a winning percentage of .709 on the versus .589 highway at home during its last four positions. Playing in New York this weekend, so, it could actually be something good.
Nadkarni: The path of the Celtics is to do what they have done during most of this series and almost the entire regular season: overwhelming teams with their shooting talent while stealing into each position defensive. What they work in the fourth quarter is obfuscated is that Boston has to build a 20 -point advantage first! The Celtics have been able to master great portions of this series despite not shooting well.
Boston does not need to reinvent the wheel. You do not even need to change your strategy radically, even if it is frustrating to see 3 not fall after possessions with a minimum step. But the Celtics are literally a couple of shots to win a series in which they have lost for four points combined in two games. The CS needs to stay with who they have been.
The largest Factor X of the series?
Nadkarni: Outside the 3 -point shooting, it is what happens on the front court. The center of the Knicks, Mitchell Robinson, has been a great more of this series, to the point that Boston desperately tried that intentionally not out of the court in game 2.
Meanwhile, the center of the Celtics Kristaps porzingis is dealing with a mysterious disease, and has caused Boston to depend much more about Horford than he wants to be. Horford has been a stable professional for years, but he is not the offensive threat that Porzingis is. Even if the central battle may not ultimately determine what happens in this series, it is an important secondary plot under what is transferred so far.
GREIF: The eye test and the numbers suggest that he is the great man of the Knicks Robinson. The Knicks have a 2-0 advantage due to their defense, and when Robinson has been on the floor, New York’s defense is 16 points better than when he feels.
But the Porzingis of the Celtics, which has played only 27 minutes due to a respiratory disease in two games, is my choice. It was a rising catalyst during the Celtics NBA championship last year, but it has been a shell of itself in this series, with almost so many ball losses (two) as the field goals (three). Porzingis tried to express his confidence in saying that lowering 0-2 “takes away all the pressure”, but the story does not confuse it. From the 463 series of playoffs in the history of the NBA to start 2-0, only 34 final teams have finally won again.
