'We're not done:' After blitzing Boston in Game 6, it's time to ask

NEW YORK — Head coach Tom Thibodeau made his expectations clear back in September. Yes, the Knicks had just won 50 games, finished with the second seed in the East and made it to the second round of the playoffs. But that was last year.

This year’s Knicks would need to integrate new pieces — would need to develop new habits, forge new bonds. You don’t just respawn at the same point you ended at last year; if you want to get to the promised land, you can’t skip any steps.

“It’s a long grind, and you prepare for that, and I would think that you begin with the end in mind,” Thibodeau said at Knicks media day. “What’s it going to take at the end for us?”

It’s tempting to say that it’s going to take exactly what they got on Friday night in an absolute shellacking of the wounded and reduced Boston Celtics — a 119-81 win that now stands as the most lopsided victory in Knicks postseason history.

A composed performance from All-NBA point guard Jalen Brunson, burnishing his postseason legacy in New York with another Penn Station-shaking win. A bruising 21-and-12 double-double from All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns, continuing to prove in this postseason that he doesn’t need to drill a ton of 3-pointers to make a major impact.

A triple-double — the first in the postseason by a Knick since Walt “Clyde” Frazier all the way back in 1972 — for the relentless Josh Hart, forever pushing the pace, soaring for contested boards, communicating defensive assignments and running HB Dive in transition. Twenty-plus points apiece, eight combined 3-pointers and seven combined blocks and steals from 3-and-D wings OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges. Strong play off the bench from guard Miles McBride, who rediscovered the touch on his jumper against Boston, and center Mitchell Robinson, a behemoth on the boards who played the best point-of-attack defense of his career on the Celtics’ wings and guards.

It all amounts to a recipe for playoff success, resulting in two utterly dominant quarters — the second and third, during which New York outscored Boston 66-37, turning Game 6 into a laugher and Madison Square Garden into a revival tent — that offered a glimpse at what the best version of this revamped Knicks team might look like when all of its big bets pay off.

“I think the way you have to look at it is, whatever your ceiling is, that’s what you’re striving for, and you’re trying to go past whatever the expectations are for you,” Thibodeau said after the win. “And if everyone commits to that, the challenge is to bring the best out of everybody.”

It’s tempting to say that, but we can’t. Not yet, at least. Because while Friday marked the end of the line for Boston — perhaps in more ways than one — this is not the end for Thibodeau’s team. We don’t know what it’ll take yet. But we’re going to find out.

New York plays on. For the first time in a quarter-century, the Knicks will play in the Eastern Conference finals; on top of that, they’ll have home-court advantage in the series, welcoming in the red-hot Indiana Pacers for Game 1 on Wednesday.

“More to go, you know?” Bridges said. “We’re not done. And that’s what it is. We came out there tonight, played hard, handled biz. But season’s not over. We got so much more to go.”

When the Knicks reviewed the film of Game 5, what they saw disgusted them. Lackadaisical effort, absent communication, assignments shrugged off rather than handed off — an abdication of responsibility wholly insufficient for the stakes of a closeout game, and unbecoming of a team with championship dreams. When they review the film of Game 6, they’ll see a team with reason to believe it can make those dreams into reality: a team with four players who can go for 20 or more; a team with the physicality and athleticism to dominate the boards, win the possession game and own significant edges in points in the paint, fast-break points and points off turnovers; a team that can out-execute you in the half-court and outmuscle you in transition.

“I feel like we played 48 minutes tonight,” said Brunson, evoking the platonic ideal of full-game excellence that Thibodeau so often waxes rhapsodic about — the kind of outing in which, as the coach told reporters before the game, “you have to give maximum effort, but you also have to have maximum concentration.”

Jalen Brunson had the Garden flying high Friday night during Game 6. (AP photo/Frank Franklin II)

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The Knicks had it on Friday, looking cleaner in their defensive switching early to induce several Celtics misses and making a concerted effort to push the ball off Boston’s miscues, with Towns and Bridges getting downhill for layups in the opening minute and a half. New York led wire-to-wire on Friday, clamping down on a Celtics team that had waylaid them in Game 5 with a 3-point barrage, but that couldn’t get its offense untracked at MSG — most notably in a second quarter that saw them score just 17 points in 25 possessions with as many turnovers as made baskets (six).

With All-NBA leading light Jayson Tatum out for the series, Jaylen Brown sought to shoulder the offensive burden and was the only Celtic in double-figures for much of the contest. Brown struggled with New York’s ball pressure, though, committing six of Boston’s 11 first-half turnovers; he also struggled to stay disciplined defensively and wound up fouling out with 2:50 to go … in the third quarter.

At that point, the Knicks led by 33. A minute later, after two Brunson free throws and a pair of Anunoby 3s, they’d extended the advantage to 41; that led Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla to wave the white flag, pulling starters Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Al Horford and rolling with reserves for the final 13 minutes and 49 seconds.

Thibodeau, unsurprisingly, kept his starters in through the first few minutes of the fourth quarter. No skipping steps. Not when you’re this close.

“The goal is always to win a championship,” he said after the game. “We’ve got eight wins. You need 16. And each one gets harder and harder, so you’ve got to keep fighting. And you’ve got to understand how important that is.”

The Knicks’ path here hasn’t always been particularly pretty. They’ve scuffled offensively for months. They barely survived a six-game slugfest against Detroit. They routinely put themselves behind the 8-ball against Boston, with their level of offensive execution and defensive precision vacillating wildly from game to game, and sometimes from possession to possession. Before Friday, they had only won one game this postseason by double digits.

And yet: They got those eight wins. Things don’t always have to be pretty to be beautiful.

“When you’re in these situations, especially in the playoffs, you gotta — you know, we talk about that, that New York grit, that relentless belief that we will never lose,” Towns said. “When you want to go deeper into the playoffs, you have to have that, and we showed it this series. And I think that was really special for us. … This team has tremendous belief in each other, and we believe that any time we step on the court, we have a chance to win.”

The Knicks do have a chance. They’ll have their hands full with a Pacers team that’s been one of the best in the NBA for months now, an uptempo collection of knockdown shooters and physical defenders with whom Thibodeau and Co. are intimately familiar, after Indiana ended New York’s season this time last year. But the Knicks are still alive, guaranteed to be one of the last four teams standing — one of the only teams still capable of getting within arm’s reach of the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.

If the Pacers can believe, and the Wolves can believe, and whoever survives the heavyweight battle between the Thunder and Nuggets can believe … then why not the Knicks?

“We believe that we can do something special,” Towns said.

The operative word in that sentence, though, isn’t the adjective. It’s the second verb. Everything the Knicks want, they’ll have to earn; as Thibodeau has long been fond of saying, the magic is in the work. And as we enter late May, the Knicks’ work is just beginning.

“It’s how you respond to the challenge that’s in front of you,” Thibodeau said. “We can’t get carried away. Obviously, it’s a great win, and we advance, and you look at that, but you also understand that you have to get ready for the next series. We know Indiana is a terrific team, and we’re going to have to be ready.”

Winning by 38 on Friday guarantees New York nothing come Wednesday. The way they did it, though — with offensive variety, with excellent defense, with their curveball gameplan coming together, with all the disparate pieces finally looking like more than the sum of their parts — offers Knicks fans a reason to be excited by the prospect of what could come next. Of learning what it’s going to take at the end. And of the possibility that, after decades of futility, this time the end is going to mark a bold and brilliant new beginning.

“The way we competed and communicated out there, it’s definitely one of our better performances,” Brunson said. “But I still feel like we have a long way to go. This confidence we have in each other and everything, just being where we are … we’re going to continue to be unsatisfied.”

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‘We’re not done:’ After blitzing Boston in Game 6, it’s time to ask — why not the Knicks?

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