Practice Makes Perfect: Knicks Top Celtics

After his first game as coach — a 28-turnover, 20-point loss to Boston— Derek Fisher noted that his Knicks still had a lot to learn about running the triangle offense.

But in their second preseason game on Saturday night, the Knickerbockers proved to be quick studies and showed off their improvements in a 96-80 win over that same Celtics squad. Afterward, Coach Fisher gave credit to his team for their drastic turnaround and noted that their hard work in practice on Thursday and Friday led directly to their success on Saturday.

“The last couple days of practice helped quite a bit,” Fish said with a laugh. “We got a lot of work done the last two nights.”

That work paid off in a big way, and a major source of the improvement was the effort of the team’s biggest star, Carmelo Anthony. Implementing the triangle offense has been a major point of emphasis for the Knicks this preseason, and Anthony was an efficient 7-for-14 shooting in that offense while scoring a team-high 16 points.

Anthony said afterward that he’s feeling more comfortable in the triangle with each passing day, but the part that excites him most is that the Knicks haven’t even reached the surface of what they are capable of in their new system.

“We haven’t broken the tip of the iceberg as far as the offense goes for me,’’ Anthony said. “I’m still trying to see where the spots are on the court and get the timing down. That’s going to take time, but

[Saturday] everyone felt a little more comfortable with the system. We’ll get better day by day.”

Fish commented afterward that he saw not only good leadership from his star player despite being in just his second game running the triangle, but also praised his increased comfort in the offense, as well as a noticeable uptick on the defensive end.

“His understanding is continuing to grow in terms of how to find shots for himself and put himself in positions to create opportunities for his teammates,” Derek said. “His defensive activity on the weak side was really great tonight. That’s something that we’ve all talked about. He had several of those plays where he was active, using his voice, putting his body in the right spots, and it helped us in the first half to get some separation.”

The contest stayed even for much of the early going, as the teams traded buckets back-and-forth through the first, with the C’s exiting the first 12 minutes with a two-point lead.

Behind seven early second-quarter points from Jared Sullinger, Boston built that lead to nine points, prompting Coach Fish to call a timeout.

During the break in the action, Derek called for wholesale changes, and the Knicks responded.

After the Knicks battled back to within one, Anthony buried a trifecta off a feed from guard Jose Calderon to give New York a 37-35 lead. The turning point of the game came just seconds later, when Melo intercepted an errant pass from Marcus Smart, and dished to Quincy Acy, who slammed home a fast-break dunk that doubled the New York lead to four.

From then on, New York never trailed. Later on in the second, Calderon added to that lead after he put a few moves on Celtics defender Brandon Bass outside the arc causing him to whiff, which led to an easy two. The puppet-like trickery of Calderon sent the Knicks bench in a frenzy, and gave New York a six-point lead.

The Celtics managed to crawl back into the game in the third quarter after Marcus Thornton hit a long jumper to tie the game at 58, but New York took the momentum right back, and held onto a three-point lead with 6:10 remaining in the third. Unwilling to relent the lead again, Anthony swerved through traffic at the top of the key and drained a nice layup to bolster the N.Y. lead to five.

J.R. Smith then followed Anthony’s lead, and put a spin move on a Celtics defender to get outside where he buried a wide open three, the first of two in-a-row to spark a 10-2 New York run and send Fish’s squad into the fourth with a 76-64 advantage.

Boston made one final run early in the fourth, when it cut the lead to four, but the Knicks once again kept the Celtics at bay. This time, it wasn’t just the usual suspects putting in work for New York.

Cole Aldrich started the rally with a deuce, followed by a triple from rookie Cleanthony Early. Acy chipped in with an old-fashioned three-point play, and Early added six more points down the stretch to salt the game away. The rookie finished with 11 points, two rebounds, two assists and two steals.

Hardaway Jr. matched Early’s 11, and added two boards and two dimes, while Smith finished with 14 points to lead the New York bench. In total, 13 Knicks were in the scoring column, with nine players notching five or more points.

Among them was Iman Shumpert, who saw his first NBA preseason action of the season on Saturday after missing the opener due to a hamstring injury. Derek said he liked what he saw from the 24-year-old, who started the game at shooting guard for the Knicks and scored six points, dealt out two assists and logged one steal in 14 minutes of playing time.

“(I saw) excitement. You know he’s thankful to be out on the floor,” Derek said of Shumpert. “I thought he was great in taking advantages of some opportunities he had for himself, which you have to do in this offense.”

Much to his pleasure, Fish’s team dished out 17 assists, and made it a point to take care of the ball throughout the game. As a result they saw a slight reduction in their turnovers down to 20 from 28 in their preseason opener.

As improved as the New York offense was in their second game, so to was their defense, which held together throughout the game and limited the Celtics to just 38 percent shooting from the field.

It was at the end of the game that the Knicks defense truly took over. Boston put up 26 and 21 points in the first and second quarters of the game, but failed to reach 20 again in quarters three and four.

“The energy on the defensive end I think was important for us,” he said. “As the Celtics started to tire, our defense started to ramp up and their points per quarter got lower each quarter.”

While Coach Fish noted that the team benefited from the extra days of practice, he believes there is still a lot to learn and is thankful for this time to clean up their mistakes, because they might not get that chance early in the regular season.

“We’ve already spoken to our players about the realities about our schedule to start the regular season, and we basically don’t have a practice day in November,” he said. “We have either a travel date, or a back-to-back, or a day before a game, so we have to practice now for what’s going to happen to us once the regular season starts.”

NEXT UP

D-Fish and the Knicks (1-1) will take Sunday to rest and prepare for a Monday game against a top Eastern Conference contender in the Toronto Raptors (2-1).

Last season, the Knicks split their four-game series with Toronto—the No. 3 seed in the East—including two wins over the playoff-bound Raptors in April after losing to them twice in December.

The two Atlantic Division rivals will tip off at 7:30 p.m. ET in Coach Fisher’s Madison Square Garden debut and the game can be seen on MSG.