Tatum powers Celtics to historic win over Knicks in season opener

Zack Cox Boston Herald (TNS)
BOSTON — The final words of Boston’s banner-raising ceremony, spoken by a beaming Jayson Tatum, were: “Let’s do it again.”
It, of course, meaning win another NBA championship, something no team has done in consecutive seasons since 2018.
The Celtics are a long, long, long way from achieving that goal. But their bid for Banner 19 got off to an ideal start Tuesday night.
Joe Mazzulla’s club bombed its way past a team projected to be one of its top Eastern Conference challengers, opening the new season with a 132-109 bludgeoning of the New York Knicks at TD Garden.
They did it by playing a supercharged version of Mazzulla Ball, the math-based, 3-point-happy approach that fueled one of the best offenses in NBA history last season. The 29 threes the Celtics drained in the lopsided win tied the single-game NBA record set by the 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks.
The 2023-24 Celtics averaged 42.5 3-point attempts per game, the most in the league by a wide margin. At halftime Tuesday, they were on pace for 64. Sixty-four! They made more threes in the first half (17) than the Knicks attempted (14). New York made just four of those, and Boston took a 74-55 lead into the locker room.
Leading that barrage was Tatum, who put to rest any lingering concerns about his jump shot by nailing six of his first nine triples as part of a 25-point opening half. All five Boston starters — including Al Horford, who started in place of the injured Kristaps Porzingis after sitting out most of the preseason for rest purposes — made multiple first-half threes. All but Horford reached double figures before the break.
The Knicks, with their talented starting five of Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and blockbuster offseason pickups Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns, are capable of overcoming that type of deficit. But the Celtics never relented.
Jaylen Brown and Derrick White hit threes on Boston’s first two second-half possessions, both off Tatum assists. Then Jrue Holiday buried one off a dish from Horford. Then Tatum. Then White again. Then Brown again. The Celtics stretched their lead to 30 and crossed the 100-point mark with 4:07 remaining in the third quarter.
Tatum finished with an opening-night stat line for the ages: 37 points on 14-of-18 shooting, 8-of-11 from three, 10 assists, four rebounds, one steal, one block, one turnover.
White, Boston’s top 3-point shooter during last year’s playoff run, was 6 for 10 from beyond the arc and scored 24 points. Brown (5 for 9 from deep) added 23 points and seven rebounds. Holiday (4 for 6) scored 18. Horford (3 for 5) had 12.
Up 130-98 with six minutes remaining, Mazzulla shut down his starters, inserting second-year pro Jordan Walsh alongside rotation reserves Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Xavier Tillman and Luke Kornet. By that point, the only drama left involved whether the Celtics would become the sole owners of the single-game 3-point crown.
A sudden cold streak foiled that pursuit. After a Horford make with 8:54 remaining tied the Bucks’ record, the Celtics proceeded to miss their final 11 3-pointers — including three on a single possession — while the celebratory Garden crowd chanted “One more three!”
Pritchard chose to let the clock run down in the final seconds rather than attempt one last heave.
This wasn’t a defensive masterclass from the defending champs, as the Knicks shot a respectable 55.1% from the floor and 36.7% from deep. But Boston was outrageously effective on the offensive end that Tom Thibodeau’s newly reloaded roster simply couldn’t catch up.
Brunson battled through stingy defense from Brown to score 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting, with Miles McBride contributing another 22 off the bench. Towns, one of the NBA’s top perimeter-shooting big, attempted just two threes in the game and finished with 11 points in his Knicks debut
The Celtics didn’t just outgun the Knicks. They out-hustled them, too. Boston swiped six steals, all by different players. New York had two. The offensive rebounding margin was similarly lopsided: Celtics 11, Knicks five. The Celtics turned the Knicks’ nine turnovers into 19 points — including arena-shaking fast-break buckets by Brown and Holiday — while turning the ball over just four times themselves, including Pritchard’s intention run-off.
____
©2024 The Boston Herald. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.