Jalen Brunson made two free throws with 12.7 seconds to play, lifting the New York Knicks to a 91-90 win over the host Boston Celtics and a 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Boston had a chance to recover in the final seconds on Wednesday, but Mikal Bridges knocked the ball away from Jayson Tatum and New York took possession.
Josh Hart had a game-high 23 points for New York, which trailed by 20 points in the third quarter and by 16 in the fourth. The Knicks received 21 points and 17 rebounds from Karl-Anthony Towns. Bridges put up 14 points – all in the fourth quarter.
Brunson, finished with 17 points and a game-high seven assists, said of the decisive foul shots, “I got up there, heard the noise and then I just tried to block everything out. And then I made two.”
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said, “We started slowly, got in a big hole, dug out way out and then guys made a lot of tough plays. (Our players) were at their best when their best was needed down the stretch.”
Derrick White and Jaylen Brown each scored 20 points for the Celtics.
“They made the necessary plays to win,” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said of the Knicks. “We put ourselves in position to do that and we just didn’t make the plays (down the stretch).
“You just take a look at it and figure out where you have to be better and put a full 48 minutes together. Have an understanding that it’s going to be difficult, but that’s why we do what we do. Figure out where we have to get better and do that. We got to get on the road and we got to find a way to win.”
Game 3 of the best-of-seven series will be played on Saturday in New York.
New York took its first lead on a Brunson layup that made it 87-86 with 1:59 to play. Another Brunson layup capped a 21-2 run that stretched New York’s lead to three points before two Tatum free throws pulled the Celtics within one point with 44.9 seconds left.
Boston took a 90-89 lead on a Tatum dunk with 18.5 seconds to go, but Brunson knocked down two free throws on the ensuing possession.
Tatum, who averaged 26.8 points per game during the regular season, was held to 13 points, but he grabbed 14 rebounds.
Boston also received eight points off the bench from Kristaps Porzingis, who didn’t play in the second half of Game 1 because of an illness. Porzingis played 14 minutes in Game 2.
The Celtics played without Sam Hauser, who sustained an ankle injury in the third quarter of Game 1.
Boston led 24-13 after one quarter on Wednesday and 50-41 at halftime. The Celtics were up by 16 before the Knicks finished the second quarter on an 11-4 run. Tatum was held to two points in the first half.
The Celtics extended their lead to 70-50 on a Porzingis dunk with 4:05 remaining in the third, but New York scored the final eight points in the quarter to cut Boston’s lead to 73-61 entering the final frame.
Boston was again foiled by poor 3-point shooting. The Celtics were 10 of 40 (25 percent) from three-point range on Wednesday after going 15 of 60 (25 percent) in their overtime loss on Monday, when they also squandered a 20-point lead.
“The way the game goes now, you can make up ground a lot quicker with the way teams shoot threes,” Thibodeau said. “For the writers around us, they always think every lead is safe, but it’s not. Everything does matter.”
Thunder rout Nuggets in Game 2
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points to lead the Oklahoma City Thunder to a 149-106 home blowout of the Denver Nuggets in Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series on Wednesday.
The Thunder, who set a franchise single-game playoff scoring record, tied the best-of-seven series 1-1 in the run-up to Game 3 in Denver on Friday.
“We knew what was at stake tonight,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “We came out desperate.”
After losing on a 3-pointer in the closing seconds of Game 1, the Thunder made sure the Nuggets wouldn’t have a chance to pull off another late shocker. Oklahoma City poured it on early, scoring 45 first-quarter points and stretching the lead to 24 just more than 10 minutes into the game.
The Thunder tied the NBA playoff record for points in a half with 87, leading by as many as 35 before intermission. The only other team to score 87 points in a half during the postseason was the Milwaukee Bucks in the second half of a second-round game in 1978 against the Nuggets.
“I didn’t really look at tonight as a response as much as I looked at tonight as just us being who we are, and that’s how we’ve been all season,” Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. “We don’t really respond to the last game. When we win, we don’t have more confidence. When we lose, we don’t have more urgency.”
Denver’s reigning NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Nikola Jokic, who scored 42 points in Game 1, was limited to 17 points and fouled out of the game in the third quarter.
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