Th𝔍e hype was massive. The stakes were incredibly high. An✃ticipation was through the Garden’s roof.
After consecutive rallies on the road from 20 points down, Game 3 ﷽༺of the Eastern Conference semifinals was billed as the Knicks’ biggest home game in 25 years.
Friday night will dwarf tha🌄t Saturday afternoon showdown.
Friday night, the Knicks return to MSG to ꧅play a monumental basketball game.
Friday n🅺ight, Tom Thibodeau’s teamಌ can send the defending champion Celtics home.
They can book their first trip to the conference finals since 2000, close out a playoff series at tꦅhe Garden for the first time since 1999 and s⛄tart to realistically dream about reaching the sport’s biggest stage: the NBA Finals.
♊When this series began, the Knicks were major long shots.
Just getting to a Game 6, most experts believed, would be a success. The first tw��o games of the✅ series turned that narrative on its head.
Then the Knicks rallied from a 14-point, third-quarter deficit in Game 4 and Jayson Tatum tore ☂his 🗹Achilles tendon in the final minutes.
Suddenly, they were expected to get by the Ce𝓀ltics. Expectations changed.
And along with those expectations comes pressure — an immense amount of pressure on these Knicks to avoid another trip to Boston for Game 7 on Monday night.🔯
The Kꦑnicks are favored for the first time in this series.
“We just gotta play desperate. I don’t think we did that [in Game 5],” Mikal Bridges said after the Knicks failed in their first shot to eliminate the Celtics on Wednesday night. “We gottꦡa come out aggressive throughout the whole game.”
In what h🔴as been a strange postseason for the Knicks, this has been a bizarre se𒊎ries.
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The Celtics have led for almost the entirety 🅷of it. Their two wins have come by a combined 47 points.
The Knicks trailed big in their three victories.
In Game 5, they led after th✃e first quarter for the first time, went up nine early in the second quarter, then were crushed the rest of the way.
They defended the perimeter poorly, the offense was stagnant and the g🍌ame was basically over entering the fourth quarter.
Bridges, Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby — the Knicks’ four top offensive w🅺eapons — all struggled, shooting 31.4 percent from the f𓂃ield between them. The postgame comments were similar to those after Game 3, when the Knicks admitted to lacking urgency.
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“It’s about winnin𒐪g every𝄹 single game possible, putting ourselves in position to win, and I think that’s what’s more disappointing is tonight, we didn’t put ourselves in position to win,” Towns said.
In the losing locker 🃏room inside TD Garden, the Knicks didn’t want to admit the obvious: that Game 6 is basicꦺally a pressure cooker, a must-win game, even if they aren’t facing elimination themselves.
J🥀osh Hart called a question about the magnitude of the game stupi✃d, that they try to win every game.
Of course, that’s true to a🎉n extent, t🔥his being a Thibodeau-coached team that doesn’t abide by the load management ways of the new-age NBA.
Still, Friday night at the Garden is very much not another game. It’s not even another playoff ga✤me.
The Knicks have the ki𝓰nd of opportunity few thought would present itself this spring.
What’s happening on and off the Garden court
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The shorthanded defending champions are on t🔯he ropes.ꦕ
The conference’s other 60-plus-win team, the Cavaliers, has already been eliminated. Home-court advant🤪age in the conf♛erence finals is there for the taking.
It feels similar to Game 4, when the Knicks rebounded from that ugly blowou❀t loss two days earlier to take command of the series.
They haven’t lost consecutive playoff games this post🐻season. No reason to start now.
“We just got to be better. We got another chance at it and we gotta bring the f💛ight,” Bridges saiꦐd. “We got to be aggressive. We can’t let happen again what happened [on Wednesday].”
