Before the Celtics dropped Game 1 of their second-round playoff series with the Knicks, before they even got to overtime Monday night, they made history.
Boston missed 44 shots from 3-point range in regulation, a single-game NBA playoff record they extended to 45 with another miss in overtime. The Celtics took 60 3-point shots in all, another playoff record.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined to go 5-of-25 from deep and went cold down the stretch while the Knicks climbed back from a 20-point, second-half deficit. New York staked multiple leads in the fourth quarter and overtime.
After Derrick White hit a triple to stake a 98-87 lead with 2:18 left, Tatum missed four 3-pointers through the end of regulation. Did Joe Mazzulla see the Celtics’ shot selection as a problem?
Not exactly.
“Obviously over the course of a game, you always can find five to 10 shots that you want to be better at, but I thought throughout the night for the most part we fought for good looks throughout the game,” Mazzulla said. “But yeah, you can find five to 10 that we could be better at.”
Tatum and Brown echoed their coach in their own post-game press conferences, through both admitted the Celtics settled at times. Starting at halftime, the Celtics took just seven shots inside the arc.
“To me, I look at the process and the shot quality. So our shot quality was high,” Mazzulla said. “The points in the paint were even. We shot one more layup than they did. We shot 10 non-paint twos. They shot much more than that. So you have to take a look at the process of what we’re trying to accomplish, and we were able to accomplish good results for the most part.
“And like I said, there’s probably eight to 10 shots that we could be better at, for sure.”
The Celtics also dealt with the halftime loss of Kristaps Porzingis (illness) and backup sharpshooter Sam Hauser (ankle). It’s unclear if one or both will be available for Game 2, though either would be a significant blow to Boston’s 3-point shooting. Whoever takes the court, don’t expect the Knicks to invite the Celtics to take even more 3-pointers and reset their own record Wednesday night.
“I don’t think you want to force them into 3s. We don’t want them to shoot more 3s,” Knicks guard Josh Hart told reporters post-game. “They got great shooters, man. We were just trying to make it tough for them, play physical.. … We were trying to take away 3s and they still got up 60.”