It was a declaration of 11 months in preparation.
It was a statement that started taking shape when the Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges – first five rounds and all – Nets last June. It was the one that gathered when Karl-Anthony Towns arrived in the middle of the training camp, when the pair of stars joined three starters and gave the Knicks a program which, on paper, could compete with the Celtics.
But paper matters only for so long. The Knicks discovered that during the season, when they went 0-4 against Boston and left the arena embarrassed in three of these games. The only statement they made was to take the Celtics on overtime during the fourth meeting, and after years of reconstruction and tinker with a list to reach this point, the losses of extension in a series of best seven with a trip to the conference final would not be enough. Far from it.
So they needed it. They needed the superb 108-105 victory in overtime on Monday in match 1 of their semi-final of the Eastern Conference, a eccentric game inside the TD garden where the Knicks erased a 20-point deficit, had the opportunity to win at the end of the regulation until the clutch of the player of the year hit Jalen Brunnson and did not know that Jalen Brown’s hands did not did not know the field.
