BOSTON – It was only fitting that it ended this way, with Mikal Bridges and OG Anunobysuffocating Jayson Tatum on the baseline Wednesday night.
“Great feeling,” Bridges said late Wednesday.
He and Anunoby were the face of the Knicks’ struggles against the Celtics in the regular season. But in the final seconds of Game 2, Anunoby and Bridges forced Tatum into a turnover to seal another improbable win.
You’d think that that kind of moment would lead to wild celebrations in the Knicks locker room. They had come back from 20-point deficits in back-to-back road playoff games against the defending champs.
But there was no party in the visitor’s locker room at TD Garden on Wednesday.
Instead, the Knicks sounded like a team that knew it needed to play better to finish off the defending champs.
“We’ve got to watch the film, see where we can get better,” Anunoby said. “…. I don’t think we’ve played as well as we can.”
Josh Hart echoed those thoughts.
“We have to continue to build. We have to continue to put together a full game. I think that’s something that we haven’t done during the course of these playoffs,” he said after scoring a game-high 23 points. “We get leads. We surrender leads. We come back from big leads. We’ve got to figure out (how to put together) a complete game.”
The Knicks will have the chance to do that on Saturday at Madison Square Garden.
“I’m scared to see when we put it together on defense and let that push the offense and get dangerous,” PJ Tucker said.
Even though they’re the lower seed, the odds are heavily in New York’s favor at this point. Ninety-three percent of the 463 teams who had 2-0 series leads in the NBA playoffs went on to win that series.
They don’t get to this position without another remarkable performance from Bridges.
For the second straight game, he shook off poor shooting to play a significant role in the Knicks’ comeback.
Bridges missed his first eight shots in Game 2 but then hit six of 10 in the fourth quarter. His 14 points in the final frame helped spark New York’s comeback.
What kept Bridges locked in during the first three quarters?
“Just everything with my teammates, man… It’s really, truly been them just holding me together and keeping me mentally right and just telling me to keep going,” said Bridges, who hit a huge three-pointer late in Game 1 after missing 10 of his first 12 shots.”And I think coach also is just trusting me — coming out in the fourth, running a play for me, putting that confidence in me. But man, it’s really my teammates and my coaches, man. They really held me up.”
Bridges and Anunoby forced Tatum into the game-sealing turnover on Wednesday. But the play doesn’t materialize without fantastic defense from Mitchell Robinson.
Robinson stayed in front of Tatum while guarding him one-on-one off of a switch. He forced Tatum to his right and Anunoby and Bridges took over.
Just like the Knicks wings, this was a fitting ending to a great night for Robinson. The team’s longest tenured player finished with eight rebounds and three steals in Game 2, wrecking the game again and again for the Celtics. Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla was intentionally fouling Robinson again to try to get him off the floor.
“That makes me feel like a threat,” Robinson said afterward.
The Knicks could have traded for a veteran center at the 2024 deadline. Robinson was still rehabbing from offseason foot surgery at the time. But they chose to stick with Robinson, betting that the homegrown center could make it all the way back from his injury.
It was a risky bet, but it’s certainly paid off.
“Mitch was all over the floor,” Tom Thibodeau said after the win. “Guarding, switching – just a great impact.”
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