BOSTON — There’s one door separating the TD Backyard hall main from the visiting head coach’s press convention room to the lengthy hallway resulting in the Celtics’ media space.
Exterior that door is an adjoining house with an indication that reads “Family Room.”
At this time, the household room is the ultimate cease within the makeshift youngsters’ museum — a winding, 25-step stretch of hallway tattered with youngsters’s art work.
Fifteen completely different items of coloured building paper line the wall with messages like “Let’s go Celtics” and “Make every day feel like Christmas.” One sheet sketches a face with the caption: “Touch to make a wish.”
However one piece of paper stands out.
It’s white — the one white web page on a black wall — creating stark distinction.
On it, a squiggly black line separates the phrases “Celtics” on the left from “Knicks” on the precise.
On the prime, in uneven handwriting, the paper reads “How won.” The misspelling is secondary to its which means.
Beneath Celtics: three tally marks.
Beneath Knicks: zero.
And throughout the museum wall, the phrases “Don’t touch” seem in 4 completely different locations.
How becoming. As a result of for the third time this season, the Knicks supplied extra proof they’ll’t contact the Celtics with a 94-foot pole — and with yet another regular-season assembly looming, the street to a title will nearly actually run by the very courts the place they’ve been run off time and time once more.
The Knicks walked onto TD Backyard’s parquet flooring already holding a minus-50 level differential in opposition to Boston this season, courtesy of a 23-point loss on opening evening, adopted by a 27-point blowout on Feb. 8
And after Sunday’s 118-105 loss, that margin has ballooned to minus-63.
The one cause it wasn’t worse? A 3rd-quarter push that briefly lower a 27-point deficit to 4. However the reigning champs promptly reasserted management, opening the fourth quarter with a 16-4 run in simply 4 minutes to place the sport again out of attain.
That’s what the Knicks need to deal with: the third quarter — the one factor they really did nicely in a recreation that after once more confirmed the hole between New York and the NBA’s elite.
“Whatever we did in the first, second and fourth quarter doesn’t really matter,” staff captain Jalen Brunson mentioned at his locker after the sport. “The third quarter, what we showed was how we can play and how we can compete and how we can … the way we stepped up in the third is how we should play.”
Compete? Possibly.
Contend? No.
The Knicks aren’t championship contenders.
Not after back-to-back decisive losses to the one two groups forward of them within the Jap Convention standings.
They’re now 0-3 in opposition to the Celtics, 0-2 in opposition to the No. 1-seeded Cavaliers, and 0-2 in opposition to the West-leading Thunder.
Seven video games. Seven losses to the one groups within the league boasting higher data.
And it’s not simply that they’re shedding. It’s that apart from the third quarter in Boston, and save for the primary go-round in opposition to Cleveland, none of those video games have been shut.
If the Knicks don’t appear like they belong — it’s as a result of they don’t.
“We’re not trying to close a gap with the Boston Celtics,” Josh Hart mentioned postgame. “They’re the champs for a reason. They got All-NBA guys, they got All-Stars, they got a heck of a team. So we’re not trying to close the gap on them. We’re trying to make sure we get ourselves to where we need to be at the end of the year.”
However the place is that? The place do the Knicks have to be on the finish of the common season? And might they get there with the roster as presently constructed?
They may certainly get an enormous enhance when their solely defensive anchor in Mitchell Robinson returns to make his season debut after offseason ankle surgical procedure. However the weight of a storied franchise’s championship hopes is a heavy burden to bear for a participant coming off two surgical procedures to the identical ankle in a single season.
But the Knicks have been constructed to contend this season. No less than that was the intention, the strategy to their insanity.
They traded 5 first-round picks for Mikal Bridges. They shipped out Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Karl-Anthony Cities to boost their ceiling.
As a substitute, the ceiling is wanting extra like a tough cap — and that’s no pun meant to their suffocating relationship with the second apron.
New York outscored Boston 39-25 within the third quarter, which might’ve been spectacular had the Celtics not doubled them, 39-18, within the opening interval. The Knicks didn’t contact 25 factors in any quarter exterior of the third.
And extra spectacular than the Knicks’ late push?
How rapidly the Celtics ended it.
It took Boston simply 4 minutes to undo two quarters of New York’s effort.
“It’s great to have something to look back on to see what was successful against a great team, the defending champions. But there’s no moral victories in this, especially for us being in New York,” mentioned All-Star heart Karl-Anthony Cities, who completed with 24 factors and 18 rebounds. “We have to get the job done. We’ll learn. We’ll have to be better. And we’ll have to implement these things we did today that worked.”
Positive, it was higher than the entire no-shows in Video games 1 and a couple of in opposition to the Celtics. And it was way more aggressive than Friday’s 37-point drubbing by the hands of the Cavaliers.
However it was nonetheless a recreation the Knicks fought tooth and nail solely to nonetheless come up brief through double-digit margin.
The Knicks are working out of time to show they belong.
Seven video games in opposition to championship contenders. Seven losses separating the very best from the remaining.
And one white piece of paper with squiggly traces and tally marks serving as a stark reminder of simply how far the Knicks need to go in the event that they hope to sooner or later adorn the Madison Sq. Backyard rafters with a banner that reads “NBA champions.”
“[We have to] just try to find a way to win. We’ve done in the past against other teams, but it’s the first time we did it against this team,” mentioned Brunson. “We can do it, but we have to do it for four quarters.”
