Before the Boston Celtics took the court without their star player in a must-win game, head coach Joe Mazzulla urged his team to give it everything they had for just one victory.
The Celtics responded with a dominant 127-102 win over the New York Knicks in Game 5, keeping their playoff hopes alive in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Derrick White was the star of the night, scoring 34 points, including seven 3-pointers, to lead his team to victory. Mazzulla reflected on the team’s performance, saying, “We did what was necessary to get it back to New York. You don’t get to pick the test that you have, you pick how you respond to them.”
Boston’s 22 three-pointers in the game helped them secure their first home victory of the series and their first win without Jayson Tatum, who was sidelined due to a season-ending Achilles tendon injury.
“Losing JT is tough,” White said. “But we’ve got a lot of guys who are highly competitive, and we didn’t want the season to end tonight.”
The Knicks now head back to New York with a chance to close out the series in Game 6. If the Celtics win, a deciding Game 7 will be played in Boston on Monday.
Jaylen Brown added 26 points and 12 assists in the win, while Payton Pritchard contributed 17 points and five 3-pointers. Luke Kornet also stepped up, finishing with 10 points, nine rebounds, and seven blocks. Kornet started the second half in place of Kristaps Porzingis, who only played 12 minutes due to ongoing issues with a viral illness.
The Celtics are aiming to become just the 14th team in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 deficit, a feat accomplished by only 13 other teams out of 294 attempts.
For the Knicks, Josh Hart led the way with 24 points despite briefly leaving the game after taking an inadvertent elbow to the face. Jalen Brunson added 22 points but fouled out with just over seven minutes remaining.
Boston closed the third quarter on a 23-9 run, taking a 91-76 lead into the final period, with Brunson sidelined after picking up his fifth foul. “They came out with a sense of urgency that we needed,” Brunson said of the Celtics’ strong performance.
In the fourth, Boston stretched their lead to as much as 28 points, continuing to dominate the game. The physicality of the game was evident, with a brief confrontation between Hart and Brown adding to the intensity.
The Celtics shot hot from beyond the arc, hitting five 3-pointers from White alone and totaling 12 in the first half. However, the Knicks did manage to build a nine-point lead at one point, connecting on eight 3-pointers of their own and picking up 10 second-chance points. Mitchell Robinson also went a perfect 4-for-4 from the free-throw line in the first half, which helped neutralize the Celtics’ strategy of fouling him intentionally.
