VIDEO: Knicks rally back from 20-point deficit to steal homecourt from Celtics

It was the third period of Monday’s Game 2 of the Eastern Conference playoff matchup between the Knicks and the Celtics, and everything seemed to be going wrong for the Manhattan club. Even from free throws, they were only dropping in 50% of their shots by that point. 

However, coach Tom Thibodeau called a timeout and New York was finally able to compose themselves, eventually rallying back from a 20-point deficit. “We’re just going to keep fighting until the clock hits zero. We’ve been showing that,” Bridges said of stealing homecourt from the defending champions.

Jalen Brunson said it was all about confidence. “We told each other to just keep believing; keep firing. Keep sticking together and chipping away,” the All-Star shared. “There wasn’t going to be a 20-point shot, so we had to keep chipping away possession by possession.”

Over the past two years, the Boston club had conquered 125 regular-season games and 20 of their past 24 playoff matches coming into their series with the Knicks, but failed to continue their three-point prowess and fell to defeat at the TD Garden.

“Some of ’em felt good, some of ’em felt like we maybe forced the issue,” said star Jaylen Brown, who only hit one of his 10 attempts from beyond the arc. “Definitely our rhythm and our timing was a little bit off. We got a lot of great looks, but it may be some truth [to shooting too many] today.”

The Celtics certainly saturated their attempts from range as they missed a record of 45 shots from the three-point line on Monday night, as New York beat them in a 108-105 overtime win. The reigning champs took 45 “uncontested” 3-pointers and missed 32 of them.

“Obviously in hindsight, if we could go back, we’d probably drive the ball a little bit more because we missed a lot of shots tonight,” said forward Jayson Tatum, who went 4-of-15 from range. “You can always go back and look and see what you should have done differently.”