NEW YORK — For the past two days following the Boston Celtics’ Game 2 loss, the basketball world had prewritten the defending champion’s obituary.
With the series shifting to Madison Square Garden and the road team in a 2-0 hole, percentages from past NBA seven-game series gave the Celtics just a 14.3% chance to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals.
The Celtics, however, jumped out to an early double-digit lead and never looked back in a statement 115-93 Game 3 victory Saturday.
And even with his team still down 2-1, Jaylen Brown has a message to all obituary writers: to hell with those percentages.
“They gotta beat us four times,” Brown said after recording 19 points, six rebounds and five assists while logging a team-high +29 in 36 minutes.
“That’s what it comes down to. Not twice, not one, not three. Gotta win four games. There’s a lot of basketball to be played,” he said.
Saturday’s Game 3 started the same way as Games 1 and 2. The New York Knicks fell behind by double-digits early and eventually trailed by 20.
The first two games of the series saw the Celtics shoot 25 of 100 (25%) on shots from behind the arc as the Knicks snuck back into the game and stole a win.
In Game 3, the lead ballooned up to 31 instead of going in the other direction. Brown said postgame the differences Saturday were the Celtics exiting halftime with more “urgency,” not “settling,” and not playing with complacency.
“Just continue to play basketball all the way through the game. And I think we did that tonight. That’s why the result was what it was.” said Brown, who shot 2 of 6 from deep Saturday.
The truest answer is the Celtics continued to take a bunch of shots from downtown — they just went through the net Saturday. In Game 3, Joe Mazzulla team’s took the same amount of 3-pointers as they did in Game 2 (40), but managed to convert on 20 of them.
And with a chance to tie the series up at two games on Monday, Brown thinks the Game 3 success serves as a confidence booster. The star also believes there is another level the defending champions can rise to.
“We’ve got open shots. Shooting with confidence, knocked them down,” Brown said. “We got great shooters on this team. Still got to continue to get to the paint, continue to put pressure on the run. And I think we can even shoot the ball even better. [We can] be more aggressive. As we get more comfortable in the series, hopefully we’ll be able to see that.”
