There was not a single second of Saturday's Game 3 when the Boston Celtics trailed the New York Knicks. Boston went down to Madison Square Garden, dominated, and won their first game of the series in wire-to-wire fashion.
After letting two 20-point leads slip away in as many games to start the series, the Celtics kept the Knicks at that same distance, or larger, for the entire second half.
Much to the dismay of many, including myself, it wasn't going to happen again.
The Celtics controlled momentum at the end of quarters
On the surface, the Celtics simply made several more wide-open shots in Game 3. After sinking just 25 total threes in the two games in Boston, they exploded for a 20 at MSG on just 40 attempts. There's no disputing that the variance helped put them in a better position to win.
Even with that, they still had to execute in the "clutch" moments when the Knicks had the opportunity to cut into their lead.
"That's the easy thing to look at," Joe Mazzulla explained to Boston Sports Journal's John Karalis of his team's improved shooting. "We won the end of quarters, and then we didn't have 11 live-ball turnovers."
Through the first three quarters (when the game was still competitive), the Celtics were a +4 in the final three minutes. They controlled the momentum in this game far better than they did on Wednesday.
It was one of Mazzulla's points of emphasis during his team's three-day break.
"Not ending quarters well. You know (the lead is) at 20 and it gets to 12 with 58 seconds left," he continued. "You have to end quarters, you have to start quarters well, you have to value the basketball, and you have to win the margins. That's all we talked about for the last 72 hours, and that's the most important."
One of the biggest stretches of the afternoon came in the final 2:55 before halftime. The Knicks had just cut the Celtics' lead down to 17 and were looking to make a push before the break.
How did Boston respond?
With poise, hustle, and patience.
At this point, Jayson Tatum had just drilled his fourth three in as many attempts. He was feeling himself to say the very least. It would've been very easy to come off of the below Al Horford screen and look for his own offense. Instead, he remained poised, quickly read the blitz and finds Horford for a wide-open triple at the top of the key.
On the very next trip down the floor, Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for a steal which led to some easy transition offense for the Cs. Brown's extra effort to attack the pass punished the Knicks for lazy play. About 30 seconds later, Derrick White secured a key offensive rebound to give Boston an extra look.
There was no complacency here despite the large cushion.
Finally, Brown delivered a haymaker three while also giving the Celtics a two-for-one opportunity. Despite struggling from beyond the arc in this series, he looked as cool as ever on the pump fake that ridded him of Josh Hart.
JB did this same thing again later in the game. I'm not sure what it is, maybe it's a muscle memory thing, but he looked so smooth shooting the ball after this move both times. Hopefully, it'll unlock his three-ball for the remainder of the round.
Again, the improvement between Wednesday and Saturday was unreal. You could point to the closing of quarters as the main reason, despite the poor shooting, that the Celtics fell behind 0-2.
Mazzulla mentioned the turnovers as an area of improvement, too. They coughed the ball up seven times during the closing stretches of quarters in Game 2. In Game 3, they only turned it over eight times for the entire game.
That, combined with their ability to execute under pressure whenever New York was trying to make a push, kept a buzzing New York crowd quiet all afternoon.
There's still a lot of work for the Celtics to do, but this was certainly a great start.