The Celtics-Knicks second-round series has been one of the more interesting and unexpected series in the 2025 NBA playoffs, and one storyline emerged from the whole thing: The Knicks have (kind of) figured the Celtics out.

Context

It may seem strange to say considering what has happened in this series, but for the good majority of last and this season, it seemed like no one had them.

They cruised to a 64-18 record, sitting 14 games ahead of the second-place Knicks. They also had the best offense in the league, with a rating of 123.2. They also had the second-best three-point percentage that season, 38.8%.

But that was last season. Surely they wouldn’t be as good, right?

Oh yes, they were.

They had the second-highest offensive rating in the league, behind the first-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, with a rating of 120.6. They shot the three ball more than in the championship season, knocking down an average of 17.8 threes compared to the 48.2 that they were chucking up on average.

What about defense, though? Good question.

This season, the Celtics had the fourth-best defense in the entire league, with a rating of 110.1. This isn’t all that far off from the 110.6 rating they had last season, which ranked second in the league.

Letting the shooters shoot

How the Knicks figured out comes down a lot to letting the shooters on the Celtics shoot- in a way.

In game 1, the Celtics shot an abysmal 15-60 from beyond the arc, and shooting 2-8 from the field doesn’t help with anything either. Game 2’s shooting splits were better, but also abysmal. Boston shot 10-40 from three, hitting only 17 shots from the fourth quarter. Game 3 was the exception; they went 20-40 from three and beat them 115-93. Game 4 was the same story. Celtics overshot the three-ball and blew an early lead to go down 3-1 in the series. Now, a Tatum-less Boston did manage to scrape another win out in game 5 to keep the series going, not blowing a 20+ lead this time. In game 5, they shot 22-49 from three and played a much better game than before. It did help that Brunson fouled out and that White, JB, and Luke Kornet all stepped up.

And this strategy does have its downfalls—despite the amazing comebacks, the Knicks went down by more than 20 multiple times this series. They also had similarly bad shooting splits from three.

The addition of Mikal Bridges to this Knicks defence has been fantastic. Across the series, he has recorded 13 steals, 23 defensive rebounds, and 4 blocks. He also sports a defensive rating of 114.

In Conclusion

Now that this isn’t an in-memoriam for the Celtics while down 3-1, I have to give my flowers to the Knicks. To take a championship-calibre team and put them up against the ropes by exploiting their one weakness is huge, and it goes a long way toward bringing the Knicks success in the near future.