Knicks starter impressed with Celtics’ record shooting

Sitting at his locker after the Celtics buried his Knicks under a flood of 3-pointers, Josh Hart could only shake his head and laugh.

New York was on the wrong end of a historic, stunningly effective shooting performance in Tuesday night’s season opener at TD Garden. Boston set a franchise single-game record and tied the all-time NBA record with 29 made threes in a 132–109 victory.

“The NBA needs to drug test them all because that was — I’ve never seen anything like that, man,” Hart joked to reporters after the game, via SNY.

The Celtics, who took head coach Joe Mazzulla’s preference for threes over twos to a new extreme as they began their title defense, were on pace to break the league-wide three-point record before going cold in garbage time. They tied it with 8:54 left in the fourth quarter before missing their last 13 attempts from beyond the arc.

Even with that late swoon, the Celtics still finished with an impressive 47.5% shooting percentage from deep (29 of 61). Before the 0-for-13 finish, they were hitting their threes at a 60.4% clip.

“Mathematically, it’s going to be tough to win that game,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Twenty-nine threes made, (61) they took. We scored a high enough percentage (36.7%), but in the three-point game you don’t win that mathematically.”

Thibodeau’s team made some bold offseason moves to challenge the Celtics for Eastern Conference supremacy, including trading five first-round draft picks for Mikal Bridges to bolster their wing defense. The Celtics attempted seven 3-pointers Tuesday night with Bridges as the closest defender and made six, per NBA player tracking, while also chasing fellow trade acquisition Karl-Anthony Towns defensively.

Every Boston starter hit at least three triples in the win, and all five shot better than 50% from distance. Jayson Tatum went 8-for-11 on threes as part of an outstanding 37-point, 10-assist performance. Derrick White and Jaylen Brown were 6-for-10 and 5-for-9, finishing with 24 and 23 points, respectively. Jrue Holiday: 4-for-6, 18 points. Al Horford: 3-for-5, 11 points.

Collectively, the Celtics’ starting five went 26-for-41 on 3-pointers (63.4%). The Knicks’ starters went 4-for-17 and they finished as an 11-for-30 team.

“I mean, you gotta give them credit, man,” Hart said. “They are already an explosive team and there was clearly an energy in the arena today that was infectious. They played extremely well. We will watch it, we will learn from it. Take a look at some of the defensive missteps we had that led to their shots. But it was Game 1. There are (81) others. We are not going to overreact.”

Originally published: October 23, 2024 at 9:12 am