The Knicks will look to recover quickly from the walloping they absorbed Tuesday in Boston to open the season, and it will have to start on the defensive end.
The Celtics raised the banner to commemorate their 2024 NBA title, and then they pummeled the revamped Knicks, who have designs on challenging the champs in the Eastern Conference this season.
“That’s championship-level basketball. For us, it was a punch in the mouth and we gotta respond,” guard Miles McBride said after the game. “Obviously, it’s a long year. Can’t overreact to one game, but I don’t think that’s how you go into a year and set the tone.”
It’s hard to argue with that assessment after the Knicks flopped in their first game with the two new starters obtained in separate offseason trades, Mikal Bridge and Karl-Anthony Towns.
“I feel very confident in our offense. We’ve got to bring that defensive identity that’s going to make us special,” Towns said. “Once we figure that out, we’ll take that next step and we’ll be able to be the team we want to be.”
Bridges had no answers for his primary defensive assignment, All-Star forward Jayson Tatum, who led the way with 37 points and eight of the Celtics’ NBA record-tying 29 made 3-pointers.
They were shooting a scorching 60.4 percent from long range at one point (29-for-48) before missing their final 13 attempts from beyond the arc while trying to establish a new mark.
“Indecision. Second and third effort,” Tom Thibodeau said when asked what went wrong defensively. “When you play a team like that you got to scramble and you got to fly around.
“One effort is not going to be enough. You got to have a second and third and fourth effort.”
The Knicks will focus on improving that defensive effort in their home opener Friday night at the Garden against the Pacers, the team that eliminated them in the second round of the playoffs last spring.
All-Star guard Jalen Brunson said having two new starters was taking “the easy way out” because “we still got our ass kicked.”
“They’ve been at it for a long time, and we’re a fairly new team, but that’s no excuse,” added Brunson, who scored 22 points but was minus-23 in 24:30 of court time. “Personally I’ve gotta be better. It starts with my approach and everything, and I’ve just gotta be better.
“We can say a lot. We can dissect everything. They made a lot of 3s. They probably made more than what we took. But we have to be better on both sides of the ball. I have to be better on both sides of the ball.”
The same goes for OG Anunoby, who was minus-21 with only four points on 1-for-7 shooting. And for Bridges and Towns, who both endured ineffective two-way debuts.
Clearly, it’s going to take some time for the altered starting lineup and rotation to come together following the departures of Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and free agent Isaiah Hartenstein, as well as the absence of injured center Mitchell Robinson.
“We’ll take a look at what we did, what we had to fix, get back to work,” Thibodeau said. “Every game reveals things to you. Sometimes you do things well, sometimes not as well as you need to. But understand why you lost or won and take the necessary steps to move forward.”