BOSTON — It was something you couldn’t help but notice. With Kevin Garnett laid up with a bum ankle, the Celtics’ interior defense looked about as fearsome as that baby in the on-line stock trading commercials.
J.R. Smith, for one, noticed.
“They really didn’t have any shot blockers,” Smith said. “[Chris] Wilcox played a little bit. But that was pretty much the only shot blocker in the game. So take it to the basket, draw fouls, find some teammates to get open and play from there.”
So Smith took it to the basket, drew fouls and all the other stuff — including an onslaught of mid-range jumpers — on his merry way to 32 points in the Knicks’ 100-85 dismantling of the Celtics last night. Smith launched 24 shots.
OK, how many were 3-pointers? Got to figure a lot, right? Try three.
“He’s been kind of mixing his game up here as of late in terms of how he’s been playing,” coach Mike Woodson said approvingly. “When you’re not making jump shots — and I say this to guys all the time on this team — when you’re struggling to shoot the long ball or mid-range shot, you’ve got to get to the free throw line and kind of soften things up. J.R. is starting to figure that part of it out.”
Especially when there’s a 0.43 per game shot-blocker in the middle for the other guys.
Smith, who authored his third 30-point game (all in the past 11 games with a high of 36) was electrifying in the first half when he collected 21 of his points. During a decisive 20-5 second quarter Knicks scoring burst, he chipped in two baskets — a driving lay-up and a tip-in — and also produced a steal. The before-the-half onslaught for all intents settled the game.
“It was huge,” he said. “Stops. We credit everything we do to our defense and when we get out and run, really nobody can run with us so we’ve got to just keep doing that and keep moving the ball.”
And scoring. Smith hit a pretty important jumper in the third quarter. The Celtics had fought back to within seven. The TD Garden crowd was revved up. So Smith buried a step back, 13-footer over top defender Avery Bradley to quell Boston momentum.
“He’s a good player,” Bradley said. “He was just knocking down shots.”
“He made unbelievable shots,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “He beat us off the dribble, made shots again.”
Smith finished nailing 13 of 24 shots from the floor (1-of-3 on 3-pointers) and going 5-of-5 at the line. He also had seven rebounds.
“When he’s attacking it’s kind of hard to stop that,” Carmelo Anthony said. “He attacks, he gets to the free throw line. He can make outside shots. We feed off of him.
“We let him do his thing and we space out. He finds guys on the court and it’s just a matter of us making shots.”