Julius Randle, Evan Fournier Lead Knicks to 2OT Opening Win vs. Jaylen Brown, Celtics
Madison Square Garden was rocking like it was Game 7, and Julius Randle put together a performance fitting of the moment.
Randle scored 35 points and Evan Fournier added 32 as the New York Knicks earned a 138-134 win over the Boston Celtics in a double-overtime thriller Wednesday to kick off their 2021-22 NBA season.
The Knicks led by as many as 11 points in the fourth quarter, but the Celtics battled back to send the game to overtime on a Marcus Smart three as time expired in regulation. The two teams then battled back-and-forth over two overtime periods, with the first featuring insane shot-making and the second turning into an ugly, sloppy slugfest as the teams ran out of energy.
Jaylen Brown scored a game-high 46 points, the most all time by a Celtic in a season opener, but did not get much help from his co-stars. Jayson Tatum and Smart finished a combined 12-of-44 from the floor.
Six Knicks players were in double figures, including a 10-point effort from Kemba Walker in his first game against the Celtics since being traded by Boston in the offseason.
Notable Stats
Celtics
F Jayson Tatum: 20 points (7-30 FG), 11 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal, 1 block
G Jaylen Brown: 46 points (16-30 FG), 9 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals, 1 block
G Marcus Smart: 15 points (5-14 FG), 8 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals
Knicks
F Julius Randle: 35 points (12-27 FG), 8 rebounds, 9 assists, 3 blocks
G Evan Fournier: 32 points (13-25 FG), 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals, 1 block
G RJ Barrett: 19 points (6-11 FG), 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 blocks
Jayson Tatum Needs to Stop Settling for Jumpers
This is an ongoing issue of mindset that apparently hasn't changed over the course of the offseason.
On one hand, it's good that Tatum never loses confidence in his jumper; he's never going to be the type of player who faces a crisis of confidence and wilts like Game 7 Ben Simmons.
Tatum has the opposite problem. He never stops shooting, even when it gets to the point it actively hurts his team. There's no explicable reason why the ball was in Tatum's hands at the end of the first overtime—and it was a call he made on the floor, waving off teammates to take an iso jumper that he clanked to send the game to a second overtime period.
The second extra session saw Tatum take a series of increasingly ugly jumpers, seemingly in an effort to get himself going, and wasting valuable possessions. Tatum was trying to dig himself out of a slump and kept going deeper and deeper, to the point it arguably buried the Celtics' effort.
Tatum's best piece of basketball during that stretch saw him abandon his jumper, put his head down and force an and-1 on a layup. In a game when Jaylen Brown couldn't miss, Tatum either needed to take a step back and let his teammate take over or use his dribble-drive game to get into the action.
Knicks Basketball Being Good is Very Fun
We could talk about the promising development, or Evan Fournier's daggers, or even how nice it was to see Mitchell Robinson throw down some vicious dunks after his 2020-21 season was cut short.
But it's one game. We don't know how much of that will last.
What will last, so long as the Knicks remain in playoff contention, is the insane atmosphere at Madison Square Garden.
The Knicks have been so bad for so long that it's easy to forget why MSG is considered the Mecca of basketball. We got a healthy reminder in the playoffs, but every crowd is great in the postseason, and they were especially raucous in the 2021 playoffs because of fans finally being allowed back in the stands at capacity levels.
This, though? It was a regular season game against a Celtics team that probably tops out as a 6 or 7 seed. The noise could have died down. The crowd could have been deflated by the Knicks' collapse in the fourth.
Nope.
Excellent work from the crowd from start to finish.
What's Next?
The Celtics host the Toronto Raptors on Friday while the Knicks travel to play the Orlando Magic.
