Tatum-less Celtics beat Knicks from rebounds #trend

Transcript

00:00Boston, when the Boston Celtics met Tuesday to prepare for an unexpected elimination game,

00:05they got the news they'd all feared, star Jason Tatum had indeed torn his right Achilles tendon

00:10the previous night at Madison Square Garden. The air kind of left the room after hearing the news,

00:17Celtics star Jalen Brown said. We didn't want to go out like that.

00:21We didn't want to make no excuses. We didn't want to come out and give up or just turn the

00:27season into what everybody else probably would expect. In addition to coach Joe Mazzulla,

00:33Brown and veteran Al Horford spoke to the team in an attempt to refocus for Wednesday's Game 5

00:38against the New York Knicks. The message was a blend, part empathy and part strategy.

00:44The Celtics players hurt for their teammate, and Tatum later sent everyone on the team a text

00:49message letting them know he was okay, but knew there was no time to wallow.

00:53The strategy part, knowing they'd lost an offensive engine, was to lean hard into defense to make up

01:00for the loss. The result was the Celtics' best defensive game of the series, as they smothered

01:06the Knicks in a 127-102 victory to cut the series lead to 3-2 and force a Game 6 on Friday back in New York.