Knicks-Celtics Game 1 Reaction 🍿 New York HAD TO WIN this game – Windhorst | SC with SVP

Knicks-Celtics Game 1 Reaction 🍿 New York HAD TO WIN this game – Windhorst | SC with SVP

Best thing I saw today in Boston 30 years ago they said so long to the garden. Is that possible been playing in the new one for a while and the reigning champs of course the Boston Celtics they cruised in the first round and they’re gigantic favorites to beat the Knicks. It was like minus 9 8 900 or something just like that 750 still that’s just pretty disrespectful. Uh that’s Jaylen Brown down low. That’s Jaylen Brown again in the paint. And then Peyton Pritchard to Brown. Regulate. It’s 6145 at the break and Boston has Carl Anthony Towns and New York stunned. Third quarter. More of the same. Down low. Jason Tatum, Al Horford. Caesar 64-0 in the last 25 postseasons when they lead by 20. The Knicks have never won a game in the last quarter century when trail trailing by 20. Well, guess what? Here come the Knicks. OG Anobi hits the three. Then Josh Hart. It’s one on four. I like my odds. 13-point game. Hart. Anobi on the run. 11. They get it to single digits. Well, you know, maybe, right? I mean, we’re late third. Jaylen Brunson. And all of a sudden, you’re thinking objects in the rear view closer than they appear. The Knicks continue to come back. Miles McBride misses. Carl Anthony Towns gets the rebound. Four-point game. Knicks down three. Anobi loses it. Muel Bridges. Jaylen Brunson. All three of these. All of a sudden, it’s a tie game. Brunson, give me all three of these while you’re at it. About four to go. They lead. Put these three in your back pocket as well. Brunson powering the Knicks to a six-point lead. What a tremendous play from Drew Holiday. Gets the pass from Tatum. Turns and gives it to White in the corner. Derek White a huge three. Boston leads by one. Brown to Drew who all he does is the most important stuff all the time. We’re tied at 100. Late going. Brunson’s got a Florida win. Warford challenges. Brunson had such a great look. One more look at this one. kind of short arms it a little bit. You understand it, right? When you’re being challenged by the big man. Put five more minutes on the clock in overtime and Anobi to the rim. My gosh, he’s been so much better as a pro than I ever dreamt he’d be. He is a spectacular player. Male Bridges, this was a gigantic shot. Pushes the lead back to six. They’re hitting threes. Boston can’t buy one. They were 15 of 60 from three. They hit that one from Brown who was 0 for nine at that point and it’s a three-point game in the late going. Got to get the shot up. Smart Carl Anthony Towns gets the foul and gave it away before he was shooting. So that’s on the floor. Take another look. That shoves before he’s in the shooting motion, but it’s close. On the inbound, Brown’s got to get the shot up. He doesn’t get the shot up because Bridges tremendous defense and the Knicks erase the 20point deficit and come roaring back to steal game one on the road. Here’s Brunson after the dub. I feel like we still had momentum at that point. Obviously, that was wasn’t the result but that we wanted. Um, but you know, we had another five minutes to go out there and compete and u we went out there as a team and did that. Um, just thankfully I had my teammates because uh yeah, overtime I wasn’t at my best, but my teammates have my back and I’m very thankful for that. The Knicks trail by 16 at the break. The largest halftime deficit they’ve overcome to win a playoff game in the history of the franchise. According to ESPN analytics, the Knicks uh were not given much of a chance to win. Uh it was 6% according to the analytics, but they they didn’t know what New York knew. Jaylen Brown, some thoughts on the other side of it. Yeah. Um you take a look at it and you learn what you can learn from it. Obviously, we had a a historic not night of like missed three-pointers, etc. We’ll take a look and kind of see what the energy was. Um, but in reality, you almost got to have a short-term memory. Throw it away, get ready for game two. We don’t have time to let stuff carry over. So, you know, um, we make adjustments, we come ready to play, um, on our home floor. We we have this just into the newsroom. Uh, this action Bronson report, Steve, uh, it came in in all caps. Sweep. I called it. I’m sticking with it. When I asked if he actually called a sweep, he responded. I feel like I have to do this in his voice. I did to my hater ass friend. I went all the way positive. This has been an action Bronson report. All right, Kendrick Perkins joins me now. That’s real. That’s a real thing. We got you got you got to check in with the community. You got to check in with the community and I got to check in with you on this. This look man, there’s a lot here and it starts with the fight. It starts with the fight of the Knicks. They could have tapped out. They didn’t do that. What most impressed you about how New York won? Well, let me tell you, Scott, that was a brawl for it all. The most impressive win of the postseason, not just for the Knicks, but overall. And it started because they got to an identity, a Tom Tibido identity. And it started with Muel Bridges. I thought he did a excellent job, him and Josh Hart of getting all the 5050 balls, making defensive stops, doing what they needed to do with the little things that didn’t show up in the stat sheet. Huge steal down the stretch for Muel Bridges that looked like the Phoenix Suns Bridges and all of a sudden 2025 little Scotty Pippen, OGA Noia, Big Body Brunson, both 29 points a piece did it on the offensive end in great fashion. And let me give some credit to Carl Anthony Towns defensively. Tom Tibido finally challenged him to guard oneonone and he switched all pick and rolls. It didn’t work out good for him in the first half. He got in foul trouble, but he stuck with him. He trusted him. Second half, Carl Anthony Town slid those puppies and did a hell of a job staying on the floor and anchoring that defense as a center. Yeah, I believe you tweeted about they were guarding like hyenas, man. It was it was about want to. The effort on that side of the ball was spectacular. And yet, Perk and yet this Boston team that are champs for a reason and are big favorites for a reason. They took 60 threes in this game, man. They went 15 of 60. I get that that that’s part of the identity, a big part. But isn’t that too many threes? What do you make of that? I don’t like it, Scott. And as champions, you should know better, right? If it’s not working, that don’t mean continue to take threes. We saw this last year in the finals. They didn’t make three-point shots at a high clip, but they got to the paint tonight. Derek White, Jason Tatum, and Jaylen Brown combined 10 for 41 from the three-point line. At what point do you think about putting your head down and getting to the basket? I mean, damn. The Knicks were good defense. They were great defensively, but Jason Tatum is too elite of a score to settle the way that he was settling. And Scott, I played with a lot of Hall of Famers. One Hall of Famer comes to mind because he wore Boston Celtic jersey and that’s Paul Pierce. When Paul Pierce was didn’t have it going far as his shooting from the outside, he did a hell of a job of getting to the free throw line. That’s what Jason Tatum got to do, especially when that three-point shot is not falling. Perk, Cleveland and Boston this year have have separated, right? We a lot of folks, myself included, you kind of draw a line underneath them and say it’s probably one or the other that’s going to get out of the East and and and play for a championship in part because New York doesn’t have a win against either one during the regular season, right? But now, but now on their home floor, both Cleveland to Indiana and now Boston to New York has dropped the first game of a playoff series. Doesn’t mean they’re going to lose it. What does it mean? What does it say to you that these two road teams have taken game one? Well, it mean it means that both of these one both of these series are going seven games. I picked both of these series to go seven games. But when you think about the Celtics, I said this this morning, they’re vulnerable, Scott. They they’re dealing with injuries. When it comes to Chris Porzingis, he hasn’t looked right the entire postseason. He went out with an illness. Drew Holiday is battling some type of injury. Jaylen Brown, we know he’s battling injury with his knee. Tatum with the wrist. And right now is a golden opportunity for the Knicks to capitalize on this moment. But then when you look at the Pacers and the and the Cleveland Cavaliers, I’m looking at it, no Darius Garland, but we forget that the Indiana Pacers went to the Eastern Conference Finals last year. They all rotation guys know how to play playoff basketball. They play agenda-free basketball offensively. They scramble. They get physical defensively. And they came out with a major win. And I got to give credit to Tyrese Hallebertton. his leadership, professionalism, the way that he led that team in game one, setting the table, picking and choosing his spots of when to score and when and when to let others cook was a beautiful thing to see. I mean, they’ve gotten everyone’s attention, most notably Cleveland and Boston. They’ve uh they’ve announced their presence with authority. We look forward to watching the games and visiting with you as we continue on. Perk, thank you as always. They scored 20 plus in the second half each. the first Knicks teammates to do that in a playoff half on the road since Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston. As I mentioned, that ridiculous stat about the scoring or assisting on those points in the second half and overtime. Brian Winhorse joins us now from Boston. And Brian, given that New York did not beat Boston in the regular season, given that, as we just established, they trail by 20 points in the second half, I think you can make a case that even though the playoff ledger will only show one- nothing, you could actually make a case it’s worth more than that. How would you measure the significance of this New York win? They had to win this game because the circumstances that g that gave them this opportunity may not present themselves again. And you know I they were saying to each other on the court like we’ve been here before we can do this and that’s a cool thing to say and you buck up your teammate but the truth is that they had not they had not been here before and they had not done this against the Celtics or any of the top teams in the league. And you know they did have some confidence from what happened in that Detroit series. Scott, they are somehow this team that didn’t win any really big games for like six months. They’re 4-0 on the road in the playoffs, which I can’t explain that. But I will say this, when they traded for Male Bridges and OG Anobi and those separate deals a year apart, and they paid very dearly for them, this is the kind of game that they traded them for. They needed them against Boston. They needed them to be able to be able to defend these big giant wings. And Anobi and Bridges were awesome down the stretch. Obviously Brunson made plays, but having those wings made a huge difference in getting this victory. You and I agree, and I’m curious if we agree for the same reason. You’re saying they had to win this game. They had to win this game because Boston went 15 of 60. Like that’s what they went from three in this game. They’re not going to do that again. But just looking at that number on the page, that is a plan that doesn’t make a ton of sense if you’re just going to keep chucking them and they don’t go in. What do you make of that number on the page? Yes. So, we know that the Celtics are super high volume three-point shooting team. We know that they have games kind of like this occasionally. They’ve never been this bad before. And I’ve been at games even in the playoffs where they have bad three-point shooting games. And they’ll come in after the game and Joe Missoula and their players Tatum and Brown will kind of be a little bit defiant and say, “Well, this is our process. This is what got us to 61. This is what got us to the title.” Not even they could do it uh tonight. They kind of went through the motions of saying, you know, we got to look at the film and maybe we’re just a little bit too many threes. It was laughable, Scott. At one point, 19 out of 20 shots were threes. Not only that, they would run actions that would get their players into matchups that they wanted. They would get Jason Tatum on Carl Towns. They would get Jaylen Brunson defending Jaylen Brown. They, you know, down the stretch, Tatum was on Mitchell Robinson. He did the hard work to create the matchup and they would bail the Knicks out. And look, obviously that’s the way they were built, but when you’ve missed 43s continuing to take them, not the best plan. So, this is a one-off situation, but it was a one-off situation the Knicks took advantage of, and that’s the most important thing right now. Well, Indiana did the exact same thing on Sunday against Cleveland and now Kenny Atinson with Cleveland says there’s real concern about the availability of Evan Mobley and DeAndre Hunter. We know that Darius Garland missed game one with a toe. That’s real concerning if they don’t have these guys after they just lost home court in game one. How do you how do you quantify it? Find me a team that can survive three of its top three or or three of its top five or six players being out. That’s a problem when you’re down 01. You know, I will say this for the last month as the as the Pacers were making a run because they finished very strong. The Cavs were watching Indiana with a bit of a side eye because Indiana is a tough matchup for them. Other than Boston, I think Indiana’s the toughest matchup for them. They have wings that can guard that to guard their guards and they have bigs that can can mitigate the Cavs giant bigs. And Indiana’s playing great. Hallebertton’s playing great. So even if they were all fully healthy, I think the Cavs knew they were going to have their hands full in this series. Now they got injuries, their margin for error is very narrow. I would I would just say that in any playoff series, you have ups and downs, you have games where things go poorly, you get guys get injured, whatever. I wouldn’t sort of say that this information like changes everything because none of them are being ruled out for the series. But if the Cavs go down 02, they’re going to be in a situation that is completely not this team hasn’t gone through before. So Indiana has a golden chance if these guys can’t play tomorrow night. Yeah. And they went through it a year ago. That’s the that’s the one thing and I hold myself accountable for this because they started poorly this year. Brian, I think I just and and because Cleveland and Boston sort of established themselves as they as the heavyweights in the East. I I’m guilty of just not giving Indiana their due. And I feel like now the bill’s about to come due. Well, Cleveland is very good. I know. So don’t don’t count anything out yet. But Indiana, when you look at the last like 40 or 45 games, the difference between Cleveland, Indiana and Boston was negligible. Indiana got off to a terrible start and had early injuries for the last half of the season. They were pretty close. So this shouldn’t surprise you if you were not necessarily you, but anybody paying attention. No, but I’m I’m I’m owning it. I’m saying that I was guilty of not acknowledging that they were as big a threat as they are, and now that threat looks pretty pronounced. Brian, appreciate the time. Look forward to doing more of this throughout. Want to try to post what I

Kendrick Perkins and Brian Windhorst join SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt to break down the New York Knicks’ comeback win over the Boston Celtics in overtime of Game 1.

0:00 Knicks vs. Celtics
3:35 Jalen Brunson news conference
4:19 Jaylen Brown news conference
5:20 Perk reaction
10:27 Windhorst reacts from Boston

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