Ahead of the Boston Celtics' second-round series against the New York Knicks, all Joe Mazzulla wanted to talk about was the margins. The Celtics were heavily favored and had beaten the Knicks four times in the regular season, but their coach stressed that none of their advantages matter if they don't take care of the details.
"They have two guys who can score at all three levels," Mazzulla told reporters on Friday. "They got role guys that can really impact the game. Their defensive pressure is great. And they have the ability to impact the margins in a big way. So we have to be able to combat that with our physicality, our attention to detail, our execution."
The next day, Mazzulla told reporters that he saw the challenge in front of the team as a "test of discipline." He mentioned the same boring stuff: rebounding, taking care of the ball, defending without fouling.
"It comes down to executing simple details over and over again with a high level of physicality and attention to detail," he said.
If Game 1 was indeed a test of discipline, then Boston failed it spectacularly. The Celtics looked comfortable for the first two-and-a-half quarters, but, after building a 20-point lead, they gave it away. In between now and Game 2 on Wednesday, there will be a lot of focus on Boston's shot selection, given that it shot 15 for 60 from 3-point range and set a new playoff record for missed 3s in a single game. The Celtics could have survived the historically terrible shooting performance, though, if they'd simply gotten out of their own way.
After the 108-105 overtime loss at TD Garden, Mazzulla lamented that they'd "left some of their good shooters open" and allowed the Knicks to find easy baskets in transition and after offensive rebounds. He told reporters that they had to be better at the "detail stuff."
It started with two wide-open 3s from New York's OG Anunoby on back-to-back possessions. On the first one, either Jaylen Brown needed to get around Mikal Bridges' screen quicker or Jayson Tatum needed to switch onto Anunoby, but both were ball-watching. The second one was more understandable, given that it was a broken play, but ideally Tatum would have recognized that he was best positioned to match up with the trailing Anunoby.
Later in the third quarter, in a stretch that spanned about a minute, New York found three easy scoring opportunities in transition. Everybody knows that Josh Hart wants to push the ball, but, after Sam Hauser missed a corner 3, Boston allowed Hart to go coast to coast, where he finished over Al Horford. Tatum missed a 3 on the next trip, and Anunoby leaked out for a dunk set up by -- guess who? -- Hart.
Payton Pritchard picked up the ball in the paint with nowhere to go on the next possession. Hart ripped it away from him, and Tatum picked up Jalen Brunson too low in transition, allowing the All-Star to step into a clean 3.
In the fourth quarter, Miles McBride found an even cleaner 3 because Brown, focused on providing gap help against the pick-and-roll in the middle of the floor, lost track of him relocating to the corner (and didn't call for a switch, either).
On the Celtics' next defensive possession, Jrue Holiday allowed Towns to crash the glass completely untouched, and, since Brown didn't put a body on Hart, Towns wound up with a point-blank layup.
Later, Hart beat Derrick White and the rest of the Celtics down the court in transition and drew a foul. Immediately after that, Tatum turned the ball over and Anunoby beat everybody down the court and tied the game with a dunk.
Boston took the lead back on a Holiday 3, but the Knicks tied it again because of a pair of mistakes: Towns again went untouched on his way to the offensive glass, and then Holiday and Brown bungled a switch on a handoff from Bridges to Brunson, leaving the Clutch Player of the Year unguarded in the corner.
In crunch time, New York found another wide-open corner 3. After Brunson got downhill, Holiday could have peeled off to Bridges to erase the Knicks' advantage. Since he didn't, White tried to "split the difference" between Bridges and Anunoby and Brunson made the correct read.
On Boston's first offensive possession of overtime, Brown missed Holiday slipping to the rim, then missed Horford open in the corner, leading to a shot clock violation. On the next one, Brown lost the ball on a drive against Towns (thanks to a perfectly timed dig by Bridges), then threw it away. Seconds later, Tatum allowed Anunoby to get behind him in transition and then fouled him on a dunk.
The Knicks took a six-point lead in overtime on another wide-open 3 in the corner. There is no explanation for Brown drifting this far away from Bridges in this situation.
Despite shooting poorly from 3-point range all night, the Celtics appeared to have the game in control halfway through the third quarter because they were taking care of the ball, getting to the line, outrebounding their opponent and getting stops.
Up 20 at home, they had plenty of room for error. But not that many errors.
"We gotta be better in the margins," Tatum said.
