BOSTON — Jalen Brunson stood inside TD Garden hours before Opening Night careful not to hype up the Knicks’ ability to match up with the defending champions. OG Anunoby’s arrival allowed for a convincing win late last year, but they lost 4-of-5 overall, Brunson emphasized, before New York transformed its roster this summer into a group that could play five-out. And while early in the development of that style, he considered their first meeting to be a real assessment of where the Knicks stand.
The Celtics rode three-point volume, spacing and doing the little things on offense to the 2024 championship. Now, the Knicks and the rest of the NBA will try to do the same.
“Whenever a team wins a championship, everyone analyzes how they did it and what their personnel was and what their scheme was,” Brunson said before the opener. “A lot of people saw how successful they were with their offense and their five out (offense)…it may not be a carbon copy, but everyone wants to adjust to the new ways of basketball every time someone wins like that.”
But that’s easier said than done.
The Celtics broke their franchise record for three-pointers on back-to-back makes by Sam Hauser to tie, and Jaylen Brown hit another to secure Boston’s 28th make from deep at a nearly 60% efficiency. The Celtics shot 65.3% of their field goal attempts from behind the line in the first half — and hit everything — while New York struggled to unload just seven attempts in the first quarter. Boston made 10-of-17 over that stretch and never looked back in an eventual 132-109 loss.
“I think the game is analytically driven, so people follow the analytics,” Joe Mazzulla said before the game. “Fortunately for us, we have the analytics, but we have the guys to be able to do that.”
Jayson Tatum finished 8-for-11 from three, many of them pull-ups, flashing his new, quicker mechanics early and often, with back-to-back makes midway through the first securing a 3-for-5 start before he pulled Jericho Sims to the perimeter two plays later and drained a step-back. The Knicks made only one three in the opening frame, a step-back 10 minutes into the game by Miles McBride when they already trailed by 15 points. An 8-0 run, with two more threes from Hauser and Jrue Holiday, boosted Boston’s advantage to 20 only 11 minutes after raising the 18th Celtics’ championship banner.
Mazzulla had repeated his mantra as he walked off the podium prior to the game. Shot margin. Shot margin. The Celtics doubled the Knicks’ three-point attempts, 61-30, after an excruciating pursuit of one more make to set a new NBA standard for made threes that they unfortunately wouldn’t find. They finished with a 95-78 advantage in shot attempts, nonetheless, something New York couldn’t overcome despite shooting close to 60% from the field for most of the night and finishing 55.1%. The Knicks fell behind by as many as 35 at one point.
“I think that’s what we’ve been seeing that in the league for a while,” Tom Thibodeau said before the game. “Denver did it with (Nikola) Jokic being out (behind the three-point line), and each year, teams are playing with more pace, but the skill set of the shooting has been added each year. I think you’ve seen the high volume of the three-point shooting go way up, but it’s still transition, easy baskets and getting the ball into the paint. The principles of sound offense are the same: get the ball in the paint, force the defense to collapse and then make the right read.”
That style yielded results for the Knicks early, but wasn’t an effective counter in a game where Boston’s outside shooting buried them. The Celtics played defenders high, rotated to the three-point line and switched more aggressively, even sending Luke Kornet out to the perimeter to contain the Knicks’ shooting. Karl-Anthony Towns only took two threes in 24 minutes, mostly tossing up tough hooks and turnaround jumpers in a 5-for-9 Knicks debut. Mikal Bridges’ strange shooting start with New York continued, opening 0-for-5 before mostly recovering inside the arc.
Later on Opening Night, the Wolves (41) and Lakers (30) also fell short of generating even Boston’s volume from one year ago, Minnesota shooting 31.7% and LA winning despite hitting 16.7% of their threes. JJ Redick, a friend of Mazzulla who adheres to his philosophies, liked the inside looks the Lakers generated in the win, but wanted LA to take more threes than in 2024, when the team finished 28th in attempts.
The NBA, as a whole, tried to increase its three-point attempt rate in the preseason, shooting nearly 45% of its shot attempts from behind the line, almost matching Boston’s 47% rate from 2024. The problem: the Celtics shot over 50 threes per game in the preseason and ramped their rate up to 55%. Boston doesn’t expect to live there, and they’re as focused on suppressing their opponents’ threes, limiting them to 35.2 attempts per game, the third-fewest in the preseason.
That approach creates their massive margins. And while it doesn’t feel like Mazzulla needs to remind the Celtics what won them so many games one year ago — he’ll keep saying it.
“It’s a credit to them buying into the system, but also using their talents to get better as a team,” Mazzulla said. “I think that’s what we’re focused on there, is how to constantly maximize the talent, the roster we have, how we blend it together, how do we take advantage from their talent standpoint and from an analytic standpoint.”
“I think it comes down to how do you control, dominate and win the shot margin.”
