New-look New York Knicks humiliated by Boston on opening night

The night was supposed to be a gauge as to how the New York Knicks stacked up against the best but, in the end, the Boston Celtics dished out a serious slice of reality.

Having acquired Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns during the offseason, the Knicks went into the season-opener aiming to put down a marker to the rest of the NBA and prove they were a challenger.

As it was, a night that started with the Celtics raising a record-setting 18th NBA championship banner to the rafters, ended with the home side toying with the Knicks as, with the game already won, they chased a record.

When Al Horford scored Boston’s 29th three-pointer with 8:54 remaining in the fourth quarter, it tied the record for the most number of threes in an NBA game, set by the Milwaukee Bucks.

With the crowd chanting “one more three,” the Celtics tried and failed to set a new mark, missing 13 successive attempts from behind the arc.

“It was almost like we got jinxed or something,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “It was like when we were just playing, having fun, playing our style of basketball, everything was going in. And then once the crowd got into it and we started hunting them, we couldn’t even hit the broad side of the barn. Everything was off. We got a bunch of great looks, and it was like a lid on the basket.

“So that just shows, like, we’re not a team that’s hunting threes. We play the game and we do what we’re supposed to do, but I think towards the end it was tough because we wasn’t playing the way we had normally played. But we still had a bunch of great looks.”

Count ’em up pic.twitter.com/R3x6a4M3xp

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) October 23, 2024

Humiliation for New York

The Celtics were having fun while the Knicks were being humiliated.

It finished 132-109 with the Knicks coming up short at both ends of the court, but particularly on defense.

Towns said: “We can talk about offense all y’all want. I’ll leave that to y’all when y’all go home and write the stories. But I know for us we got to play defense.”

final. pic.twitter.com/MxbKsiBGPi

— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) October 23, 2024

It’s Game 1 – Thibodeau

Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau tried to cut a calm figure afterwards and rightly pointed out it was the first game of a long season.

He said: “It’s Game 1. We didn’t have that much time yet. But it’s early, and you got to learn from it. So our thing is get better from this and watch film, and I think it was a great test against a team like this, who are already up there.

“It’s a good test, and we’ll learn from that and try to build on what we got to do with our habits and everything.”