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BOSTON — The Celtics didn’t need this one. The Knicks did. You can bet your weekly beer allowance that’s how they are going to spin this one here, in this city, where they’ve essentially spent the past six months like inmates in a cell, crossing off the days until the regular-season compulsories are complete and the playoffs can begin.
Know what?
If the situations were reversed, if the cities were reversed, that’s the way New York would certainly interpret things. That’s how Knicks fans would treat this, the way Celtics fans are. As an outlier. As an aberration. As a fluke.
The Knicks spent three quarters absolutely demolishing the Celtics, settling for a 118-109 victory after blasting the margin past 30.
Hell. Even the Knicks weren’t prepared to make any declarations.
“This isn’t the Celtics we’ve seen for 80 games,” said Jalen Brunson, routinely brilliant once again with 39 points and a plus-25 rating, deprived of what would have been a team-record-tying third-straight 40-point game only because of a rare botched free throw late in the third — and, rarer still, by Tom Thibodeau icing him on the bench in the fourth quarter with the lead at 29 and the Celtics’ regulars all retired for the night.
“We had their number tonight,” he said.
If it felt eerily familiar to you back in New York, it should have. Because it sure felt an awful lot like the evening of Dec. 29, 2007, a night when the undefeated Patriots visited Giants Stadium with little of tangible merit on the line for either team, just specific ambitions. The Pats, having clinched home field by right around Halloween, wanted to finish the regular season 16-0. The Giants, locked into their playoff seed, wanted to see what the hype was about with the allegedly unbeatable Pats. Everybody played.
The result is a part of the historical narrative for both teams. The Pats got their perfection. The Giants proved to themselves they could play with the bullies from Boston, settling for a 38-35 loss. Knowing as they left Giants Stadium that night that they might not want to face them again in the Super Bowl, but they sure wouldn’t be intimidated by the prospect — would, in fact, welcome it.
If that’s what the Knicks take out of this, then maybe that’s enough. The Celtics’ only goal Thursday night was to keep their rotation guys from rolling ankles. They did that. The Knicks look all but form-fitted for the 3-seed, and a loss wouldn’t have changed that. And maybe a win, even one as impressive as this one was, won’t change much, either.
But like the Giants before them, they sure won’t run from it if it happens.
“They don’t count any more than any other game,” Thibodeau said of wins like this, and wins like the resounding one in Milwaukee on Sunday. “But they’re a good test for us to see exactly where we are.”
Where they are is a team that seems to be reaching a second peak at precisely the right time of this season. The first one, of course, was capped by back-to-back wins against the Nuggets and Heat — the opponents in last year’s Finals — in late January, a dizzying surge immediately followed by the buzzkill losses of Julius Randle and OG Anunoby.
Randle won’t play again until next fall. Anunoby is back, and each game he makes you salivate if you’re a Knicks fan. Thursday, for instance, he logged time defensively against all of the Celtics’ core players — dogging Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown and Derrick White, even swatting a Kristaps Porzingis drive, 6-foot-7 rejecting 7-foot-2.
And in a mirror image of versatility, the Celtics threw just about every defender and just about every look imaginable at Brunson, and it didn’t only fail to slow his roll, he actually might’ve gotten to 50 if he’d played his regular minutes.
Maybe that doesn’t mean anything.
But it sure doesn’t mean nothing.
“We made plays, we made shots, made a lot of timely plays,” Brunson said. “They’re the top dog in the East.”
Thursday didn’t change that, same as Dec. 29, 2007, didn’t change the order of merit for the Pats and the Giants. It took a rematch to do that.
The Knicks? The Knicks will gladly accept that replay because it’ll likely mean they’ve already won two series. Maybe the Celtics — and Boston — will still be able to dismiss this game then as swiftly as they surely will Friday morning.
It would still be a hell of a thing to see.
