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After the Knicks’ second 20-point comeback in two games gave them a 2-0 series lead over the Celtics, their locker room was surprisingly muted, as reported by SNY’s Ian Begley.

“I don’t think we’ve played as well as we can,” OG Anunoby said. 

“We’ve got to figure out (how to put together) a complete game,” Josh Hart echoed.

New York may have come away with two impressive upset wins on the road, but they are rightfully focused on the improvements they need to make in Game 3 over the results of the prior contests. They know as well as anybody that Boston is the reigning NBA champion for a reason, and that two wins don’t make a series, four does. 

It’ll take the Knicks’ best efforts to win two more and put the Celtics away for good. Here are three improvements they should look to make as they head back to New York and MSG for the next two contests.

Defensive rebounding

During the regular season, Boston only ranked 18th in offensive rebounding, hardly a major strength in their attack. Yet against New York, they’ve dominated securing second-chance opportunities. 

The Celtics are pulling in 36.2 percent of their misses over the two games of this series, which would have been good for second in the league during the regular season. They’ve secured 35 offensive rebounds, partially a product of their voluminous missing, but still a major concern for the Knicks, who pride themselves on cleaning the defensive glass.

New York struggled with the higher-volume offensive rebounding teams during the regular season, which appears to have played a role in Boston’s game planning. The Celtics are attacking their own misses and getting rewarded for it, not enough to win either of the first two games, but enough to see it’s a flaw they can exploit.

There aren’t particular Celtics hurting the Knicks (though Kristaps Porzingis has seven in only 27 minutes of play), it's more a team effort that New York needs to adjust to with more boxing out and maybe a personnel move. Most offensive boards have come right around the rim, and most of those have been guys grabbing or tipping their own miss.

Perimeter players are also flying towards the rim and free throw circle to catch some surprise rebounds. Lots of this can be corrected with some more diligent effort and poise on that end.

If that doesn’t do the trick, the Knicks may look towards rotational changes. New York is gathering 70 percent of Boston misses with Hart off the floor vs. just 62.6 percent with him on.

Meanwhile, the Knicks went on their Game 2 comeback in large part with Mitchell Robinson and Karl-Anthony Towns sharing the court, giving them two rebounding bigs vs. their usual look of one plus Hart. We could see more of these minutes at MSG if the rebounding doesn’t turn around. 

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Towns currently has 35 points on 29 shots in the series' first two games, having attempted only two threes so far, despite a standout series against Detroit and a 34-point outburst in his last regular-season matchup with the C’s. New York’s been winning the series on defense, holding Boston to a 90’s era under 99.5 points per 100 possessions, but their offense has been equally sluggish, and Towns could give them the right kick.

Boston put their wings on Towns while having their center play off Hart, essentially giving Towns a one-on-one mismatch each trip down the court. While New York’s gone some stretches intentionally feeding Towns low against these undersized defenders, to success, it hardly lasts.

In fact, despite playing 25 of 29 potential fourth quarter and overtime minutes this series, Towns has only attempted five field goals and scored seven points in those minutes. That can’t suffice for your second-best offensive player, who once again has a glaring advantage in this series. 

While his three-point volume will be a tough solve given how tightly guarded he’s been, just getting Towns some more looks should be an emphasis going into Game 3. He’s been the most efficient scorer of the starters behind Hart, and even if he isn’t converting can help get the Celtics in foul trouble with his physicality and paint touches. 

The Knicks may need to throw in some new sets the Celtics haven’t seen - they’re switching and denying any plays to get Towns a clean touch down low. But this is likely more of an approach problem than a schematic one, and New York will simply need to lock in further on getting Towns the rock. 

Play a full 48 minutes

This one is a much simpler adjustment. The Knicks had to come back down 20 in both road games after getting off to slow starts.

Pulling that off a third or fourth time would be increasingly improbable, and they’re better off not falling far behind in the first place. They have a chance to take a commanding lead in the series at home, and should do so in commanding fashion.

That takes 100% effort for 100% of the game, not leaving any doors open for bad stretches and Boston runs. If they can accomplish that, they’re in good shape to make the conference finals.

Raise a glass to Gregg Popovich, the gruff teddy bear who lifted the San Antonio Spurs into the NBA’s elite. After three decades on the Spurs’ sideline, he is stepping back from coaching to become the team’s president of basketball operations. It’s a back-to-the-future move for the 76-year-old: he was the Spurs’ general manager for eight years before he became the team’s coach. (“I’m no longer the coach, I’m El Jefe,” Popovich jokingly declared this week before unveiling a T-shirt with that Spanish title.) Altogether, Pop won five NBA championships from 1999 through 2014, a run that puts him among the greatest coaches in league history. But when it came to being the NBA’s unflinching statesman, he was in a league all by himself.

Popovich wasn’t just the NBA’s backbone. He was, perhaps, the most fearless truth teller in all of sport. Certainly no one was bolder when it came to taking on Donald Trump – whom Popovich has described as a “soulless coward,” a “pathological liar” and a “deranged idiot”. Popovich told beat reporters he was “sick to my stomach” after Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, a tipping point he likened to the fall of Rome. He slammed Steve Bannon’s appointment as chief White House strategist as a fear-mongering exercise. During the Spurs’ 2017 media day, Popovich launched into a 21-minute condemnation of Trump and the Maga movement after the president attacked NFL players and Nascar’s Bubba Wallace for their national anthem protests. “Our country is an embarrassment to the world,” Popovich said. “This is an individual that when people held arms during games, [he thought] that they were doing it to [dis]honor the flag. That’s delusional. But it’s what we have to live with.”

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Whenever the stakes were highest culturally and politically, Popovich was the coach you could most count on notto stick to sports. During the NBA’s celebration of Black History Month in 2018, Popovich held forth on the subject of systemic racism and acknowledged his own white privilege. “If you were born white, you automatically have a monstrous advantage – educationally, economically, culturally, in this society,” he said. “It’s a tough one because people don’t really want to face it.”

Through it all, he maintained a wry sense of humor. When reporters questioned the Spurs’ losing streak in 2019, Popovich used it as an opportunity to indirectly criticize Trump. “Whoever started the rumor that we’re losing these games, it didn’t happen,” he joked. “It’s a witch-hunt. I see treasonous behavior. I see spies. They’re all sick.”

Popovich follows in a rich NBA coaching tradition of speaking out that started when Boston’s Red Auerbach used his considerable power to knock down barriers for Black players. And when Popovich began speaking out against Trump, he didn’t lack support from his peers. Stan Van Gundy, the former Detroit Pistons coach turned broadcaster, called out Trump’s “misleading” anthem protest attacks in a Time Magazine op-ed. Golden State’s Steve Kerr, a key player on two of Pop’s championship teams, echoes Popovich’s outrage on all things Trump and Trump-adjacent. Mike Budenholzer supported a player-led decision to boycott a 2020 playoff game in protest at the police shooting of Jacob Blake while coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, sparking a wave of walkoffs across US sports.

But where Van Gundy and Budenholzer are respected for their opinions outside the game because of their stature in it, and Kerr – whose father was murdered while serving as president of the American University of Beirut – is blood-bound to rebuke immorality in all its forms, it hits different when Popovich enters the chat because he comes from a background that chimes with many conservatives in America. Popovich played college basketball at the Air Force Academy in the 1960s and was the team’s captain and leading scorer his senior year. After graduating with a degree in Soviet studies and serving his required five years, he considered a career in the CIA before starting his coaching journey as an Air Force assistant in the early 1970s.

When Peter Holt bought the Spurs in 1993, one of his first moves was to bring back Popovich as general manager. (Pop got his NBA start with the Spurs in the late 80s, as the right hand to coaching legend Larry Brown.) Popovich helped realize the NBA’s global ambitions and organized his rosters around Frenchman Tony Parker, Argentina’s Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan – a competitive swimmer from the US Virgin Islands who retired as the game’s greatest power forward.

Popovich’s coaching style wasn’t always appreciated in its heyday, before the current 3-and-D era took hold. Casual fans dismissed the Spurs’ dogmatically unselfish brilliance, the apogee of Brown’s play-the-right-way ethos, as a bore even as San Antonio piled up the victories – first with Naval Academy hero David Robinson, then Duncan, then perennial All-Star swingman Kawhi Leonard. And while Popovich was hard on his players – not least Duncan (who was frequently made an example of for the greater good) and may have cost himself more rings by losing his patience with Leonard (whose frequent injuries and sporadic availability proved frustrating), the coach’s compassion won out more often than not.

Stories abound of Pop’s personal touch. He might scold a reporter, Bill Belichick-style, but he also might help that same reporter land another job if his newspaper suddenly folded, or support another through his cancer fight. (Even a question as simple as How are you doing? might elicit a sincere response from Pop.) He was quick to wisecrack in his own huddle and break the tension on court. LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Steph Curry wouldn’t have started the league’s wine obsession without Popovich – the NBA’s king oenophile – breaking out his rare bottles for boozy Team USA dinners. (“He would always come around the table and tell everybody what the wine was that he was serving that evening,” Kerr said in a 2000 interview, recalling the Spurs team dinners. “It became a point of real connection between Pop and the players.”) Popovich liked to joke that the best wines in his collection were older than Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio’s current French phenom.

But during the team’s exhibition trip to Paris earlier this year, Wembanyama hosted the boozy team dinner while Popovich stayed back in the US to recover from a stroke that would eventually lead to his stepping down. After suffering another health scare last month, Popovich fully relinquished his coaching duties. As much as it smarts to not see him go for a sixth title with Wembanyama after keeping the Spurs fighting during fallow times, it just means Popovich can finally get to work on what would be his boldest statement yet: installing Becky Hammon as the NBA’s first female head coach.

Hammon, who was on Pop’s staff for seven seasons, has been dodging succession rumors for years. “My heart’s a little heavy for him because I know how much he loves it, but I’m sure he’ll crush this role just as much,” says Hammon, a championship-winning coach with the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. “He’s a huge reason why I have this job.” (Don’t hold your breath on Hammon as the Spurs’ next coach, though: she went on to say she is “super happy” in the WNBA, but wouldn’t rule out a return to the NBA down the line.)

History will remember Popovich as one of sport’s all-time winners – the notable coach who beat super-squads built by Phil Jackson and Pat Riley. Meanwhile, the head coaching success of Hammon (two WNBA titles), Kerr (four NBA titles), and Budenholtzer (one, with Milwaukee in 2021) as well as former assistants Ime Udoka (Houston) and Will Hardy (Utah) speaks volumes to Pop’s wider impact in the game as a mentor. But Popovich’s ultimate legacy as a league statesman stands for all time and leaves a void that even Kerr, his chief envoy, will struggle to fill. But then again who knows if Kerr will even have to? While Popovich may be stepping back from the sideline, one expects his voice will still resonate simply because there’s no chance of him simply sticking to sports. Not with the stakes still so high.