How Knicks Game 1 Win Laid The Blueprint For Upsetting Celtics

Monday night, the New York Knicks notched their biggest win of the Tom Thibodeau era, marching into Boston and beating the defending-champion Celtics.

A matchup no one gave the Knicks a chance in appeared to be just that when Boston led 75-55 with 5:47 to go in the third quarter.

New York had played well for much of the first half, until Karl-Anthony Towns foul trouble led to a disastrous Mitchell Robinson stretch of missed free throws.

Nonetheless, after Boston pushed their lead to 20, it seemed like the Knicks would fold under an onslaught from the road crowd.

Instead, this team again showed the playoff grit that few thought they had.

How Knicks Game 1 Win Laid The Blueprint For Upsetting Celtics Now, the Boston Celtics are better than what they showed in Game 1.

Theyre the reigning champions who won 61 games this season for a reason.

Theyre more talented than the Knicks and, maybe more importantly, deeper than New York.

Dont expect Boston to miss 45 threes again or shoot 7-25 on open looks from deep.

They clearly took the Knicks lightly after building a big lead and paid the price for it.

However, despite what the world says, Tom Thibodeaus group does have major matchup advantages in this series.

They can force Boston into their worst tendencies to keep games close despite being the underdog.

If theyre able to hang around until the fourth quarter, they have the best clutch scorer in basketball .

The path is still very thin, but NY has a legitimate chance of winning this series after going up 1-0.

1.

Wingstop Came Through Defensively When Leon Rose traded for OG Anunoby and eventually Mikal Bridges in 2024, his idea was to get a tandem of versatile defensive wings.

This plan was directly targeted at stopping the Boston Celtics forward duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown .

With the Eastern Conference clearly running through the Cs for the next few seasons, it seemed to be the correct roster-building direction.

Unfortunately, throughout the year, neither Anunoby nor Bridges seemed to help the Knicks stifle Bostons offense, as they were dominated in the season series.

Well, that all changed in Game 1, as Wingstop played one of the best games of the season by any defensive duo.

The pairing held Celtics players to 6-32 FG as the primary defender in the game.

Anunoby was incredible throughout the game, shutting down all five of Bostons starters to levels never seen before .

Then, down the stretch, Bridges made three of the most impressive defensive plays of his campaign to help NY steal Game 1.

He had a steal that led to an and-one dunk, a block of Jrue Holiday , and ripped the ball from Brown at the buzzer to seal a three-point win.

The Celtics shot a combined 6/32 FG (18.8%) in Game 1 with either OG Anunoby or Mikal Bridges as the primary defender.

Anunoby individually held Celtics players to 2/18 FG pic.twitter.com/jrHYTS6eGb KnicksMuse (@KnicksMuse) May 6, 2025 Its clear that New York has the personnel to at least limit Bostons prolific offense.

They switched everything last night, ditching the drop coverage that Towns has struggled with all season.

All five guys on the floor at any given time held up well in switches, even Jalen Brunson .

While the Celtics will certainly expose Brunson and Towns in isolation at times, NY can hang around in these games by forcing Tatum and Brown into contested threes theyre more than willing to take.

2.

Brunson and KAT Attacking Mismatches The other extremely encouraging sign for NYs chances in this series was their two best players attacking certain matchups.

For Brunson, he feels comfortable going at any of Bostons three bigs ( Al Horford , Luke Kornet , and even Kristaps Porzingis ).

Time and time again, he generated dribble penetration to score/playmake, or was able to get off a step-back three.

He hit two of those step-backs over Horford in crunch time, and should have that shot available all series.

Again, if the game is close late, New York has the advantage because of their captain.

As for Towns, he had a ton of success in the early portion of the game, going against all of Bostons non-centers.

Joe Mazzulla wants to put his big man on Josh Hart so he can help off Harts jump shot, which is a great idea.

However, it forces someone else to guard Towns, and none of the players on the court have a chance at stopping him.

KAT gave buckets of all varieties to Holiday, Brown, Derrick White , and even Tatum before landing in foul trouble after a couple of questionable calls.

3.

Towns Must Avoid Foul Trouble Another lesson learned in Game 1 was that Towns must do everything he can to avoid foul trouble.

Unfortunately, it will be somewhat difficult with NY switching everything, especially if the officials are calling the game tightly.

However, KAT did a solid job in isolation against Tatum and Brown.

He has to stay disciplined and let them score if they have him beat, rather than picking up silly fouls.

Mitchell Robinson put his imprint on the game defensively last night and was a game-high +13.

He got the huge stop on Tatum at the end of regulation.

With that said, he cannot be forced onto the floor when Mazzulla decides to employ hack-a-Robinson.

In year seven of his career, Robinson is still a poor free-throw shooter, and he went 3-10 from the stripe last night.

The counter-point to the Celtics shooting better from three is that New York missed 14 free-throws, but if Robinson is taking ten a game, theyre in trouble.

This article first appeared on Last Word On Sports and was syndicated with permission..

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