The Boston Celtics blew out the New York Knicks 132-109 on the opening night of the 2024-25 season thanks to a three-point barrage. The Celtics tied the NBA single-game record with 29 made threes and after the game, Knicks forward Josh Hart hilariously stated they needed to be drug tested.
“NBA needs to drug test all of them, I’ll tell you that right now,” Hart said. “I ain’t ever seen nothing like that before. You gotta give them credit. They’re already an explosive team. Obviously, there was an energy in the arena today. It was contagious. They played extremely well.
“We’ll look at it; we’ll learn from it,” Hart continued. “Look at some of the defensive mishaps that we had.”
The Knicks certainly had a fair few mishaps on defense, especially in the first half, which led to wide-open threes for a team you do not want to give those looks to. The Celtics ranked second in the NBA for three-point percentage last season at 38.8% and once they got going, there was no stopping them for a while. They ended the night 29-61 from beyond the arc and could have easily shattered the all-time record too.
The Celtics missed each of their last 13 three-point attempts and a lot of them were solid looks. As for why that might have happened, Jaylen Brown, who went 5-9 from three on the night, had an explanation.
“It was almost like we got jinxed or something,” Brown said. “When we were just playing, having fun, playing our style of basketball, everything was going in. Once the crowd got into it, and we started hunting them, we couldn’t even hit the broad side of the barn. Everything was off.
“We had a bunch of great looks and it was like a lid on the basket,” Brown continued. “So that just shows we’re not a team that’s hunting 3s. I mean we played the game, we do what we were supposed to do. But I think towards the end, it was tough because we wasn’t playing the way we had normally played. But we still had a bunch of great looks.”
The Celtics probably won’t make that mistake again. With their spacing and with how many threes they shoot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do end up breaking the single-game record at some point this season.
Josh Hart Dismissed Concerns Surrounding Mikal Bridges’ Shooting
One of the biggest talking points regarding the Knicks in the lead-up to the season was Mikal Bridges’ jump shot. Bridges had struggled in the preseason and then went 0-5 in the first half against the Celtics. He eventually got going in the second and Hart made it clear after the game that he wasn’t concerned about his teammate’s jumper and wasn’t going to entertain that topic.
“Mikal don’t care about anything else. We don’t care about all the background noise about Mikal, his shot… We don’t care about it,” Hart said. “He puts the work in every day, he’s going to be good. The talk around it is stupid. There’s stupidity to it. At the end of the day, he’s been almost a 40 percent career three-point shooter. Talk around it is stupid and we’re not going to entertain it.”
Bridges has shot 37.5% from three in his career and has the total support of his teammates. I think he’ll be just fine in the long run too. Bridges went 7-8 from the field and 2-3 from three in the second half against the Celtics, so there is reason to be optimistic as well.
As for Hart, he ended the game with 12 points, four rebounds, and three assists. The Knicks are going to need him to be better on the glass moving forward as that’s not a good enough return at all.
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