Knicks Must Avoid Falling into Last Year's 2-0 Lead Trap

The NBA on TNT crew, for all of their fooling around and how little they watch the league from day to day, did issue a real, educated warning to the New York Knicks after Game 2.

Playoff-weathered legends Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal advised that New York avoid playing with their food and take out the Boston Celtics sooner rather than later. A 2-0 lead is a dominant way to start a series off, especially against a favored contender like the Celtics, but that's not insurmountable. Barkley knows this, having blown such an advantage twice as a player, and the Knicks should, too.

After all, they found themselves in a similar enough situation last season. They were matched up against the Indiana Pacers then, a less-fearsome juggernaut than the Celtics, but the Knicks were pretty banged up themselves. Julius Randle missed the entire playoff run, OG Anunoby couldn't remain healthy, and Mitchell Robinson was an inconsistent presence in the lineup. Despite their gutting out back-to-back wins to start that second round, they ended up falling in seven.

These Knicks have survived a grueling season, one defined by head coach Tom Thibodeau's over-reliance on his starters and a lack of chemistry with the first-year core, but they're more talented than they were last year. Their entire rotation, as thin as it looks compared to Boston, is here and ready to play, having spent the first two games demonstrating their resilience and comfortability in the clutch.

That's what made their lethargic Game 3 clunker that much more frustrating to Knicks fans. Instead of chiseling away and coming back from 20-point deficits like they did in Games 1 and 2, they succumbed to a lead that grew to as big as 31 in turning in their first second-half dud of the series.

The Celtics didn't look like the same team in this most recent game, either. They splashed 20 of the 40 threes they hoisted, way up from the 25% rate they hit at through the first pair of games, and while Jayson Tatum had a bounce-back game, Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard got some revenge on supposed matchup nightmare Mitchell Robinson with some of that patented Boston creativity in space.