The Boston Celtics earned their 15th win of the season Saturday night, but it wasn’t always pretty.
Boston looked in total control early as they welcomed the New York Knicks to TD Garden and even carried a 15-point lead into half time that likely should have been even higher, but looked discombobulated and sloppy to open the third quarter and it showed up in the scoresheet.
The Knicks began the quarter on a 12-2 run and that momentum carried throughout the remainder of the quarter as they outscored the Celtics 41-24 to actually take a two-point lead into the final quarter. To put the third quarter into context, Boston allowed just 66 total points across the other three quarters combined.
After the game, Celtics head coach Ime Udoka addressed the difficult quarter and a specific explosive time out he called and his message to the team during it.
“I was livid, honestly and just really wake up. We talked about what we did well in the first half and came out and did the opposite for the most part (in the third quarter) and got a little cute there and relaxed and lost the quarter by 15. But give them credit, they responded well,” Udoka said. “You know a 41-point quarter, but then we got back to lock-down defense and allowed 19 in the fourth quarter.
“So they responded well, we made it harder on ourselves than it had to be but still give the group credit. Coming off a hard-fought game yesterday and a back-to-back, guys played extended minutes with all of the people missing and just had a little lapse there but snapped out of it and picked up where we left off in the first half.”
Boston guard Josh Richardson — who had his finest game yet as a member of the Celtics with 27 points off the bench — loved what he saw from Udoka during the third quarter time out and thought it was needed.
“I don’t know how much he told you and I ain’t no snitch so I can’t really get into that. But he laid into us good. That’s what good coaches are going to need to do sometimes,” Richardson said. “We were bleeding and we needed to stop it and it wasn’t happening and so he sat down and let us have it as he should have and I think that was a good moment for him going forward.”
The third quarter may have been tough for Boston, but ultimately the game ended up going the way it had hoped for with the Celtics earning the 114-107 win. The Celtics are dealing with a plethora of COVID-19 cases and injuries and had just 10 players suited up on the second night of a back-to-back that saw them take on the league-leading Golden State Warriors on Friday night in an emotional game.
Obviously a 41-point quarter isn’t what you want, but in the grand scheme of things the shorthanded Celtics bounced back in a major way against the Knicks and showed resiliency in the process.
