Knicks Guard Josh Hart Wants The NBA To Drug Test The Celtics After Boston Went Unconscious Beyond The Arc
There is only one explanation for the embarrassing beatdown the Boston Celtics handed the New York Knicks on Tuesday night: performance-enhancing drugs.
At least that's what Knicks guard Josh Hart is going with.
While plenty in the NBA world predicted the Celtics to come out of the gates a bit sluggish to begin the new season fresh off of winning the title, Boston came out of the gates on fire against a new-look New York team.
While the Knicks hung around for the first half of the opening quarter, the Celtics slammed the door shut in a hurry by jumping out to a 43-24 lead by the end of the first frame. Jayson Tatum was a problem for the Knicks all night as he managed to score 37 points while going 14-of-18 from the floor while Derrick White and Jaylen Brown each scored 24 points and 23 points, respectively.
The most mind-boggling stat from the game, however, was the Celtics chucking up 61 three-point attempts. Shooting 61 times from the arc each night isn't going to result in a ton of success in the long-run, but if you make 29 of the 61 as Boston did on Tuesday night, well, they'll be hard-pressed to find a team that can beat them.
Hart had a front-row seat to witnessing the Celtics three-point barrage, and after the game when asked if Boston did anything specifically to get so many good looks from deep, he went the light-hearted route and jokingly urged the NBA to drug test the Boston team.
"I don't know. The NBA needs to drug test all of them. I'll tell you that right now," Hart said, according to SNY. "I ain't never seen nothing like that before.They played extremely well, we'll look at it. We'll learn from it, look at some of the defensive missteps that we had."
The Knicks simply ran into a buzzsaw on Tuesday night.
The Celtics led the league in three-point attempts (42.5) per game last season, but nobody could have predicted 61 three-point attempts in the season opener, and they certainly didn't see them hitting 29 deep balls as they did in their season-opening win.