With all eyes on New York in the past 24hrs following the blockbuster trade involving young unicorn Kristaps Porziņģis and the Dallas Mavericks, the Knicks had to quickly cobble together a competitive team. As the deal was only completed yesterday, the new players acquired via Dallas were unavailable for tonight’s game. New York and it’s G-League team started out solid with a 13-4 run to start of the game via a white hot 83 percent shooting percentage.
Boston started off slow but behind the good play Jayson Tatum, Marcus Morris and Kyrie Irving, the Celtics capitilized on some nice ball movement to go on a 14-2 run and take the lead 17-15 with 5 minutes to go in the quarter. In a tightly contested quarter, the Celtics struggled to shoot the ball lodging 34 percent through the opening 10 minutes.
Cue Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward who entered the game decisively, and judging from their first few touches: a nice fast break steal and dunk on Broadway by Brown and a huge throw down Alley-oop for Gordon Hayward with his immaculate hair in tact, both guys came to play!
As Mike Gorman noted at one point, Gordo “plays with some serious gel.”
GORDON. HAYWARD. pic.twitter.com/0FEvY4YXQb
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) February 2, 2019
With the crowd as close to silent as you could get, and even the front office uninterested in the remainder of the first half, Mike Gorman provided yet another stellar call as time wore down and the cameras panned up to the Knicks Front Office in the the stands.
With heads down, completely uninterested in the on court proceedings whilst staring at phone screens, Mike Gorman duly noted the front office was “playing Candy Crush.”
To be fair to New York, Damyean Dotson (*checks spelling) and Luke Kornet (*again checks spelling) played a good first half for the Knickerbockers with some solid shooting.
As the second half got under way a few sparse, unintelligible “Ky-rie” chants emerged from the bleachers. Trading baskets through the entirety of 3 quarters, Boston kept the Knicks at arms reach to lead 80-73 into the final stanza.
The fourth quarter was more of the same as Boston showed enough to extend the lead whilst matching the Knicks’ energy plays. The Bench play of Gordon Hayward was a bright spot on the night as Hayward (14 pts, 2-3 3pt shooting) showed flashes of his old athleticism, poise and defensive pressure, traits of his game that he showed in Utah prior to the injury. Marcus Morris kept the scoreboard ticking late, illustrating his strong deep range game and Jaylen Brown had more monster plays including this huge breakaway rim rattler:
JAYLEN'S NOT MESSING AROUND pic.twitter.com/betmCcN8T7
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) February 2, 2019
Boston held on to the lead to close it out, as Irving and his teammates return home to the Garden for a Sunday afternoon clash with the PG13, Russ, Adams and the Oklahoma Thunder.