To Tyson Chandler, the story of the Knicks’ scrappy, season-opening win over the Celtics was written all over his face.
“It’s not going to come easy with them,” the new Knicks center said after the 106-104 Christmas victory yesterday at Madison Square Garden. “You can see my face. My lip is busted in four different places, my nose. It was a great game. That’s what you want. You don’t mind [the physicality], at least I don’t.”
The 7-foot-1 Chandler was the Knicks’ major offseason addition, a bruising center imported to anchor a defense with a history of being soft in the middle under coach Mike D’Antoni, and it was an uneven debut for the revamped defense against a Celtics team playing without leading scorer Paul Pierce.
Led by slicing-and-dicing point guard Rajon Rondo, the Celtics torched the Knicks for 35 points in the third quarter to turn a 10-point halftime deficit into an eight-point lead. But with Chandler as the backbone the Knicks put the clamps on when it counted in the fourth quarter, limiting their division rivals to 17 points on 35-percent (7-for-20) shooting in the period and making two clutch stops in the final minute to secure a come-from-behind victory.
“We made some mistakes out there and we let them cut into our lead, but I love the way we responded,” said Chandler, who finished with six of the Knicks’ 11 blocks, including two in a row during a turning-point possession midway through the fourth quarter. “We didn’t hang our heads, we kept fighting and grinding. … We keyed in on them defensively. We started to build a wall.”
After the Celtics got the ball with the score tied 104-104 and 53 seconds left, Amar’e Stoudemire blocked a Brandon Bass shot inside. Ray Allen recovered the loose ball for the Celtics, but he was stripped by Landry Fields. Then, protecting a two-point lead in the final seconds, the Knicks forced a missed 3-pointer by Marquis Daniels, and Chandler and Bill Walker combined to contest Kevin Garnett’s off-the-mark jumper at the buzzer.
“Fourth quarter, when we had to shut them down, we did,” D’Antoni said. “And that’s how it’s got to be. We’ll build off this and we’ll get much better.”
The Knicks certainly have room to improve on the boards. They were out-rebounded by the Celtics 41-31 and 34-24 over the final three quarters. Bass, the Celtics reserve forward, bulled his way to a game-high 11 rebounds, five of them on the offensive glass, while Chandler tallied just three (he averaged 9.4 last season for the Mavericks) and Carmelo Anthony led the Knicks with eight.
For now, though, D’Antoni, getting an assist from defense-focused assistant coach Mike Woodson, likes what he sees on the defensive end, and the amped-up Garden crowd was happy to see its chants of “Dee-fense!” taken to heart.
“Tyson does an unbelievable job of going straight up, keeping his hands up — you’re not getting any easy shots in there,” D’Antoni said. “That’s what we gave up years before: second [chance] rebounds, loose balls. It was easy. It’s not going to be easy anymore.”