New York (AFP) – Defending NBA champion Boston overpowered New York 115-93 on Saturday, dominating to the finish after squandering 20-point leads to lose two prior playoff games to the Knicks. Payton Pritchard, the 2025 NBA Sixth Man of the Year as the top reserve player, led Boston’s blowout with 23 points while Jayson Tatum added 22 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists. Jaylen Brown had 19 points and Derrick White scored 17.
No team has ever rallied from 0-3 down to win a series, a fact the Celtics knew all too well. “We understood the magnitude of this game,” Tatum said. “We needed this one. Didn’t like the way we felt after last game, so just coming out here with the right mindset, just trying to put it all together.”
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The visiting Celtics pulled within 2-1 in their NBA second-round playoff series and can equalize the best-of-seven Eastern Conference matchup by winning game four on Monday at Madison Square Garden. “We understand Monday is going to be a great atmosphere, a big game. It’s going to be fun,” Tatum said. “Just coming out with the right mindset, understanding we played better but we can play a lot better based on a lot of things we did we really didn’t like tonight. So just building off that.”
Coming off two woeful games of three-point shooting, the Celtics made 20-of-40 from beyond the arc in game three, with Pritchard sinking 5-of-10 three-point shots, Tatum making 5-of-9, and Al Horford hitting 3-of-4. “We made some shots,” Tatum said. “It’s a make or miss league sometimes.” Boston made 40-of-83 shots overall (48.2%) while the Knicks made only 32-of-80 overall (40.0%) and 5-of-25 (20.0%) from three-point range.
Boston had pulled away to big leads in the first two games at home but faded late with poor three-point shooting and lost in the final minutes while delivering their worst three-point shooting efforts of the campaign. “You can’t ride the emotional roller coaster of the playoffs,” Tatum said. “You can’t get too high or too low after a win or a loss. Our core group, we’ve been together a long time, we’ve been in so many different circumstances, so we just thought to stay together and figure it out.”
The Celtics seized another big early lead in game three but this time had the touch from beyond the arc and defensively as the Knicks never led. Boston leaped to a 36-20 lead after the first quarter, shooting 6-of-7 from three-point range and nearly 58% from the floor. The Celtics stretched the half-time edge to 71-46, the largest half-time home playoff deficit in Knicks history, and led 96-70 entering the fourth quarter before dominating to the final buzzer — finally. Boston shot 12-of-19 (63.2%) from three-point range in the first half while New York was a woeful 2-for-12 and 17-of-43 overall (39.5%).
Jalen Brunson led New York with 27 points while Karl-Anthony Towns had 21 points and 15 rebounds for the Knicks, who have not reached the conference finals since 2000. Saturday’s only other NBA playoff game will find Minnesota at Golden State with the Western Conference series level 1-1.
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