Knicks Rout Celtics 119-81 to Reach Eastern Conference Finals for First Time Since 2000
The New York Knicks dismantled the foolish notion that the Boston Celtics might be better without Jayson Tatum, routing the 2024 NBA champions 119-81 in game six to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2000. During the regular season, the Knicks went a combined 0-8 versus the 64-18 Cleveland Cavaliers and the 61-21 Boston Celtics, but the Knicks took care of the hobbled Celtics and will now face the Indiana Pacers, who blitzed the Cavaliers 4-1 in the Eastern Conference's other second round series.
The Knicks broke the franchise record for largest margin of victory in a playoff game after the Celtics gave their fans a brief flicker of hope by winning game five 127-102 sans Tatum, who suffered a ruptured right Achilles in the waning moments of New York's 121-113 game four victory. The Celtics now own the dubious distinction of suffering the worst loss ever by a defending NBA champion in an elimination game, and the 38 point defeat is tied for the third worst in franchise playoff history.
Four New York players scored between 21 and 23 points: Jalen Brunson (23 points, six assists, six rebounds), OG Anunoby (23 points, nine rebounds), Mikal Bridges (22 points), and Karl-Anthony Towns (21 points, game-high 12 rebounds). New York's fifth starter, Josh Hart, logged a triple double with 10 points, 11 rebounds, and a game-high 11 assists. Brunson led both teams in scoring (26.2 ppg) and assists (7.2 apg) during this series. It is interesting that so much attention is paid to Dallas swapping Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis but little is said about Dallas getting nothing in return for the "Brunson Burner," who had a scorching run during the 2024 playoffs and is quickly establishing himself as one of the most productive playoff performers in Knicks history.
My Eastern Conference Finals Preview will take a deeper look at the Knicks, so this article will focus on the Celtics not only in terms of losing to the Knicks but also regarding the franchise's future in light of Tatum's injury.
It is not clear why Tatum has so many critics, doubters, and detractors, but their voices could be heard loudly after the Celtics won game five without him. It is not surprising for a team--particularly a talented team with a lot of playoff experience--to win one home playoff game without their best player; the challenge is to sustain success without him, and game six spoke volumes: the Knicks outrebounded the Celtics 55-36 while holding the Celtics to 31-86 (.360) field goal shooting, including 12-40 (.300) from three point range. Tatum was the centerpiece of Boston's offensive juggernaut, leading the team in regular season scoring (26.8 ppg) and assists (career-high 6.0 apg) while also pacing the team in rebounding (8.7 rpg); he also led Boston in playoff scoring (28.1 ppg), rebounding (11.5 rpg), and assists (5.4 apg). Tatum was Boston's leading rebounder (11.8 rpg) in this series by more than 5 rpg.
We often hear about Stephen Curry's "gravity," but Tatum exercises a significant gravitational pull as well: during the 2024-25 regular season, the Celtics averaged 116.3 ppg while shooting .462 from the field and .368 from beyond the arc, sinking the most three point field goals (17.8 per game) in NBA history. The decline without Tatum was dramatic; the Celtics' 81 points versus the Knicks is their 2025 playoff low by 10 points, and they only scored less than 81 points once during the 82 game regular season; during the 2023-24 regular season and playoffs, the Celtics scored less than 91 points just once.
Tatum has been one of the NBA's most productive players for more than half a decade, averaging at least 23.6 ppg in each of the past six seasons while earning six straight All-Star selections, three All-NBA First Team selections (likely four after this year's voting is announced), and three top six MVP finishes (likely four after this year's voting is announced). He has been even better in the playoffs, averaging at least 25.0 ppg for six straight playoff campaigns while winning the 2022 Larry Bird Eastern Conference Finals MVP as the Celtics reached the Eastern Conference Finals four times, and the NBA Finals twice. Tatum has averaged at least 29.0 ppg in five playoff series during his career, and the Celtics won four of those series. He averaged at least 21.5 ppg in 17 straight playoff series dating back to 2020. In terms of signature performances in individual games, Tatum scored a playoff career-high 51 points in a 112-88 game seven win versus Philadelphia in 2023 (outdueling Joel Embiid and James Harden, who have each won a regular season MVP), and he scored 50 points in a 125-119 game three win versus Brooklyn in 2021 as the injury-depleted seventh seeded Celtics defeated a second seeded Nets squad featuring Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden. Tatum has scored at least 40 points in three other playoff games, including 42 in game four versus the Knicks this year before rupturing his right Achilles with 3:06 remaining and the Celtics trailing 113-104. Tatum had 11 points in seven fourth quarter minutes, and the series would have been tied 2-2 if he had stayed healthy and led the Celtics to a late comeback.
Last year, Tatum led the Celtics in playoff scoring (25.0 ppg), rebounding (9.7 rpg), and assists (6.3 apg), but the media gave the Larry Bird Eastern Conference Finals MVP and the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP to Jaylen Brown despite Brown not being as productive or dominant as Tatum. Tatum has a 15-7 (.682) career playoff series record, including 1-1 in the NBA Finals and 2-3 in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Tatum's career playoff resume ranks near the top among active players; here are the career playoff series records of the other players who made the All-NBA First Team at least once since 2019-20:
Stephen Curry: 24-6 (.800), 6-0 Western Conference Finals, 4-2 NBA Finals
LeBron James: 41-14 (.745), 9-1 Eastern Conference Finals, 1-1 Western Conference Finals, 4-6 NBA Finals
Kawhi Leonard: 19-9 (.679), 2-2 Western Conference Finals, 1-0 Eastern Conference Finals, 2-1 NBA Finals
Kevin Durant: 22-11 (.667), 3-3 Western Conference Finals, 2-2 NBA Finals (he has four NBA Finals appearances because the Warriors won the 2019 WCF without him and then he played 12 minutes in the 2019 NBA Finals before rupturing his Achilles)
Nikola Jokic: 10-6 (.625, pending the outcome of tomorrow's Denver-Oklahoma City game seven), 1-1 Western Conference Finals, 1-0 NBA Finals
Anthony Davis: 7-5 (.583), 1-1 Western Conference Finals, 1-0 NBA Finals
Devin Booker: 5-4 (.555), 1-0 Western Conference Finals, 0-1 NBA Finals
Giannis Antetokounmpo: 8-8 (.500), 1-1 Eastern Conference Finals, 1-0 NBA Finals
Luka Doncic: 5-5 (.500), 1-1 Western Conference Finals, 0-1 NBA Finals
James Harden: 15-16 (.484), 1-3 Western Conference Finals, 0-1 NBA Finals
Joel Embiid: 5-7 (.417), no appearances in Eastern Conference Finals or NBA Finals
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: 2-4 (.333, pending the outcome of tomorrow's Denver-Oklahoma City game seven), no appearances in Western Conference Finals or NBA Finals
Tatum has also been durable, playing in at least 72 regular season games in each of the six seasons of his career not impacted by COVID-19 (and he played in 66 out of 72 games in 2019-20, and 64 out of 72 games in 2020-21). Tatum has only missed one playoff game out of 121.
Considering Tatum's productivity and durability, it is difficult to overstate the significance of him likely missing most if not all of an entire season during the height of his prime. It is unusual for a reigning NBA champion to lose its best player to injury during the next season's playoffs; perhaps the most prominent such example is Bill Walton's foot injury that short circuited Portland's 1978 playoff run and marked the end of his Portland career, though Walton later won a championship as a reserve for the 1986 Boston Celtics. Magic Johnson suffered a hamstring injury during the 1989 NBA Finals, ending the L.A. Lakers' chance at a "three-peat" after they went 11-0 in the first three rounds of the playoffs, but that injury did not affect the rest of his career, and he led the Lakers back to the NBA Finals in 1991.
Tatum's injury not only sealed the Celtics' fate in an already challenging series versus the Knicks, but it will have implications for next season and beyond. The Celtics had the NBA's third highest payroll ($195,598,491) in 2024-25, and their projected 2025-26 payroll ($223,938,825) is expected to be the league's highest. Brown was paid $49,205,800 in 2024-25, and he will be paid $53,142,264 next season, while Tatum made $34,848,340 this season and will receive $54,126,830 next season even though he will likely miss most of the season. Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, and Derrick White will each make at least $28,000,000 next season. Without getting into all of the financial details, the Celtics are a "second apron" team, which means that they not only have a hefty luxury tax bill but they also face severe restrictions regarding permissible trades and free agent signings.
Thus, the Celtics face some tough and potentially very costly options. Keeping the core roster players will be expensive, is unlikely to yield a championship next season sans Tatum, and ties the franchise's hands in terms of adding depth. The Celtics could reduce their payroll and obtain some financial flexibility by trading Holiday and/or Porzingis. Bobby Marks floated the idea of the Celtics trading Brown to get out from under his massive contract, but it is difficult to imagine the Celtics breaking up the Tatum-Brown duo that has been so successful unless it becomes clear that Tatum will not return to form (in which case the Celtics could decide to do a full overhaul).
The Celtics' situation highlight how fragile success is; if Tatum had stayed healthy and engineered a 10-0 run in the last three minutes of game four, the Celtics would have been two wins away from the Eastern Conference Finals--but instead they are out of the playoffs and facing a very uncertain future.
Labels: Boston Celtics, Jalen Brunson, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Karl-Anthony Towns, New York Knicks
posted by David Friedman @ 8:40 PM
2 Comments:
"It is not clear why Tatum has so many critics, doubters, and detractors"
I think there are a couple reasons and different doubters or detractors might have different ones.
1) Has lost a lot of series where he was either the higher seed and/or had the better team on paper, and as the team's best player, that reflects hardest on him. The two Miami losses loom especially large here but the Warriors and 2018 Cavaliers are also cases where a lot of people felt like the Celtics "should" win but didn't. As impressive as all his ECF runs are, he's also been eliminated by a lower seeded team in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2025. That's more than half his playoff runs, and more often than it's happened to most stars. One of those being to an 8-seed doesn't help.
2) Some of the performative Kobe tribute stuff tends to rub Kobe/Lakers fans the wrong way. It's totally a valid form of grieving to text your dead friend's phone, but once you screenshot that text and send it to your media buddies so everyone knows about it, it ceases to be about Kobe and becomes more about ghoulish self-promotion. He's had other, lesser instances of mega-cringe, but that's the one most people are gonna bring up first.
3) Terrible efficiency in the Finals both times, and while his floor game stayed respectable, his defense also kinda fell off. Them easily beating Dallas in 5 without him playing especially well didn't really do much to deflate the frontrunner allegations, you know? Curry got a similar bad rap for playing way better in the 2015 Finals, and it didn't really quiet down until he got the 2022 FMVP as a pretty near one-man-show on offense. Tatum's probably going to need to achieve something similar if he wants to shut up this particular pack of doubters.
4) Nobody has ever sounded cool whining about not being the face of the league.
5) He's had some clutch moments as you covered above, but he's also had some really ugly playoff failures at the personal level in addition to the team failures mentioned above, most recently being absolute dog's bottom at home against the Knicks for those first two games.
6) The media keeps trying to prop him up as a Giannis/Curry/Jokic/Lebron/KD level star, and I think people understandably wanna call bullshit on that. He's the next tier down, which is still firmly All-NBA, but much as James Harden doesn't belong in those conversations and it annoys you when people force him into them, I think a lot of people have a similar response about Tatum (though duh he's better than Harden).
7) The above I think are all more or less fair, depending, but this one is kinda shitty and not his fault: he's just not very charismatic. NBA discourse is narrative driven, but NBA starpower is largely personality driven, and Tatum just doesn't distinguish himself the way a lot of more beloved stars do. Cowherd killing him over it probably pushed it into overdrive by putting it under a microscope, but even before that I think people just don't feel drawn to him the same way they do with more gregarious stars like Curry or Lebron, or more magnetic or intense stars like Kobe or KG.
I don't really feel one way or the other about him but I do get the pushback on the media trying to anoint him as a top guy until he starts doing more top guy stuff.
Anonymous:
Points 2, 4, 6, and 7 are narrative-driven nonsense, which just reinforces my point that there is not a logical reason for Tatum to have so many critics, doubters, and detractors. You may be right that those are excuses that people use to bash Tatum, but those are poor excuses, not logical reasons.
Regarding points 1, 3, and 5, as I noted in my article, Tatum has had more playoff success in his career than almost every player who has made the All-NBA First Team in the past six years. That matters more than some of the negatives, because every player has negatives on his resume.
Your summary of why people "hate" Tatum may be accurate, but if it is accurate then it reveals that many people form opinions based more on feelings than facts.
I agree with you that Tatum has not yet reached the Giannis/Curry/Jokic/LeBron/KD level but over the past six years he has outdone every other player in the league by a good margin--and, assuming a healthy return from his Achilles injury, he has enough runway left to add more championships and individual accomplishments to his resume.
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