Outside Madison Square Garden, it was sunny and beautiful, a perfect day for the biggest Knicks home playoff game in over two decades.
Inside, it was gloomy, a powerful storm of Celtics 3-pointers that wouldn’t stop until this Eastern Conference semifinal series had a vastly different feel.
The Knicks still hold a 2-1 lead this series, but that advantage feels incredibly precarious after Saturday’s 115-93 Game 3 pounding inside a quiet and dejected MSG.
This looked like the first three regular-season games between the two teams — three Boston romps.
This looked like the Celtics team that was supposed to cruise past the Knicks into the Eastern Conference finals for the fourth straight year and was considered a favorite to repeat as champions.
Entering Saturday, the Celtics were the 31st team in NBA playoff history to drop the first two home games in a best-of-seven series. Only five of those have gone on to win the series.
Boston is looking to be the sixth.
After getting shut down in Boston, All-Star wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown found their game, combining for 41 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists.
The Celtics hit 20 3-pointers in 40 attempts after missing a combined 75 over the first two contests.
It was a 25-point game at halftime and 31 early in the third quarter.
There was extended garbage time, as Marv Albert liked to say.
Unlike the first two games of the series, the Knicks weren’t coming back from that kind of deficit again. They never got closer than 20, setting up a pivotal Game 4 back at the Garden Monday night, and have lost three consecutive home playoff games.
Midway through the third quarter, the Knicks were slowly building momentum.
The lead was 24 when Jalen Brunson inexplicably dribbled the ball off his foot. It led to a Tatum layup in transition — symbolic of the Knicks’ lost afternoon.
Really, nobody played well for Tom Thibodeau’s team.
OG Anunoby (two points) didn’t score in the first half and has seven points over the past two games. Brunson struggled over the first three quarters.
The rebounding was poor early and the defense was soft.
Mitchell Robinson’s issues at the free-throw line continued with a 4-of-12 showing, dropping him to 11-for-39 in the playoffs.
Brunson led the Knicks with 27 points, but most of that came with the game well in hand.
Karl-Anthony Towns added an impact-less 21 points and 15 rebounds and Josh Hart had 10.
Payton Pritchard scored 23 points off the bench for the Celtics.
It was 71-46 in favor of the Celtics at halftime, and there were very few positives to take for the Knicks. They started 4-of-17 from the field.
They were again outrebounded (minus-five), missed 10-of-12 3-point attempts and were mostly noncompetitive.
The Celtics made their first three 3-pointers, and kept on drilling them from deep.
They were 12-of-19 from distance in the first half. After struggling mightily in the first two games, Tatum and Brown had a combined 31 points over the first half on 50 percent shooting.
The Celtics built a double-digit lead just 6:35 after the tip-off, and they were up by 16 after one.
It mushroomed to 25 at the break.
The large crowd sounded like a library.
