Celtics Knicks
The Knicks held off the cold-shooting Celtics all evening on Monday.  AP Photo/John Minchillo
By Tom Westerholm


The Celtics dropped a 109-94 loss to the Knicks on Monday on a cold-shooting evening with Jaylen Brown out.
Here are the takeaways.
1. The Celtics collectively posted their worst 3-point shooting game of the season, finishing a paltry 9-for-42 (21.4 percent) from behind the arc.  That narrowly edged their loss to the Clippers in December (9-for-39, 21.3 percent) and their two losses to the Magic, also in December (11-for-46, 23.9 percent and 12-for-47, 25.5 percent)  .

Al Horford buried his first 3-point attempt on the Celtics' first possession — the end result of a fine beginning set and a flawlessly placed skip pass to the corner by Jayson Tatum.  Then the Celtics went nearly impossibly cold, missing their next sixteen 3-pointers before Marcus Smart ultimately knocked one down with 1:36 left in the second quarter.
All season, the Celtics have relied heavily on 3-point shooting with extraordinary results, but Monday's game started out to flip in the first half while they were given to the paint.  Trailing by 20 halfway through the 2d quarter, Derrick White scored a put-back layup which sparked a 12-0 run that pulled the Celtics back within eight.  All 12 points have been an end result of the ball touching the paint — five two-point subject dreams and free throws.


  • Then Tatum and Horford neglected 3-pointers, and the Knicks connected on two big ones to push the lead lower back to 16. They took a 14-point lead into halftime.
  • After the game, the Celtics felt like they had properly photographed that in reality didn't fall.
  • "I don't recognize what the adjustment could be if we get more shots, more offensive rebounds and just move 9-for-42 from 3," Mazzulla said.
  • "I thought we played top basketball," Malcolm Brogdon added.  "I concept we moved it, I notion we were given the shots we wanted.  That's an appropriate shielding team, specifically in the half-court, but I think we got the shots we wanted.  We just didn’t make a lot of them.”

2. For the first time in his profession (at least in a regular-season or playoff game), Tatum turned into thrown out after he picked up a 2d technical arguing that he should have gotten a foul call in the fourth quarter.