BOSTON — The Boston Celtics aren’t in Orlando anymore.
They can’t afford to shoot 15-for-60 from 3-point range in the playoffs against competent offensive teams, but that’s exactly what they did in Monday’s Game 1 loss to the New York Knicks at TD Garden. Boston set new NBA playoff records with 45 misses and 60 attempts from deep.
That kind of performance only flies against teams like the Celtics’ first-round opponent, the Orlando Magic. The worst 3-point shooting team in the league maintained that reputation by shooting just 26.3 percent from 3 in the series, which Boston won in five games despite mostly being held in check from beyond the arc.
Orlando didn’t make more than 10 3-pointers in a game throughout the series. New York shot 17-for-37 (45.9 percent) from distance in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
In Monday’s matchup, the Celtics held a 20-point lead midway through the third quarter. The Knicks cut the deficit to nine by the end of the frame and pulled ahead late in the fourth before finishing off their 108-105 win in overtime.
After going up by 20, the C’s shot just 10-of-40 (25 percent) from the floor and 7-of-29 (24.1 percent) from deep. A whopping 34 of their 41 shot attempts in the second half were 3s.
After the loss, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was asked whether he was satisfied with his team’s shot selection.
“For the most part,” he said. “Obviously, over the course of the game, you always can find five to 10 shots you want to be better at.”
While the 60 3-point attempts jump off the page, the Celtics shouldn’t shy away from that game plan going forward. They lived and died by the 3 during their 2024 NBA championship run, and they remained an elite 3-point shooting team during the 2024-25 campaign.
Twenty-five of Boston’s 60 3-point attempts were unguarded catch-and-shoot 3s, according to The Volume Sports’ Jason Timpf. Only seven of them went in.
That trend is unlikely to continue, and Knicks guard Josh Hart knows it.
“I don’t think you want to force them into 3s. We don’t want them to shoot more 3s,” Hart said. “They got great shooters, man. We were just trying to make it tough for them, play physical. … We were trying to take away 3s, and they still got up 60.”
Celtics star Jaylen Brown finished with a team-high 23 points, but shot just 1-for-10 from 3-point range. He was asked whether Boston attempted a “knockout punch” with the number of 3s they took in the second half.
“Some of them felt good, some of them felt like we maybe forced the issue,” Brown said. “Definitely our rhythm and our timing was a little bit off. We got a lot of great looks, but there may be some truth to that. We’ve got to look at the film and see what happened in that second half.”
His co-star Jayson Tatum (23 points, 4-15 3-PT) agreed with his assessment.
“Probably some times where we settled,” he said. “I could’ve put more pressure on the rim. But a lot of times, we felt like we got really, really good looks and just couldn’t convert.”
Tatum scored just two points in the fourth quarter, both from the free-throw line. He was 0-for-7 with six misses from deep in the frame.
That won’t cut it against the Knicks, who matched the C’s with a 36.9 3-point shooting percentage during the regular season. Boston will look to bounce back in Game 2 at TD Garden, which is set for 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
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