The series is 0-2 behind, the Celtics don t need to panic, do a little better and you can still reach the Eastern Conference Finals.

It's hard to be surprised by anything in this chaotic playoffs, considering that we've just walked through a quarter and have seen a 20-point lead over any other playoff in NBA history, and in seven games the team that ended up losing has a winning rate of up to 94%.

Even so, what happened to the Celtics' first two games against the Knicks is unbelievable. In fact, the defending champions will be surprised enough to face a team they swept through the regular season with a big 0-2 score (16.2 points average win rate). Even though they were leading 20 points in the third quarter in both of the first two games, they still did it, which was almost incredible.

Rational people may disagree with the luck here, but one thing we can be sure is that the Celtics will accept this change. Not only because they have the proof of concept of Larry O'Brien trophy, but also because Joe Mazura is a process-focused coach whose belief in his core identity is deeply rooted. Even if they have their backs to the wall, these people will not fundamentally change who they are. However, they need to perform better for a full 48 minutes. The optimistic side: The Celtics lost 4 points in Game 1 and 2, although their catastrophic shooting percentage was not limited to the three-point line (their non-basketball two-point shooting percentage also hit 29%. They created a good look by finding the weakest links of the Knicks – Jaren Brunson and Carl Anthony Towns – which will become even more important when their open 3-point shooting percentage starts to exceed 25%. Their defense, their most reliable business card, throughout the battle window, the Knicks control 1 point per round.

The Celtics know how good they can be, they have been shooting higher away from home all season, so they should look at their chances of coming back as optimistic as any team after losing their first two games at home. They can simply regain their winning form with some open jump shots or all-in-the-skirts at the basket and bring the advantage back to Boston. Meanwhile, the Celtics can’t rely solely on this possibility to face their current reality, that is, their turnover space has disappeared in a game that obviously makes them uncomfortable.

New York's defense should be heavily responsible for Boston's scoring dilemma. OG Anunobu did a great job of marking Jason Tatum. Josh Hart and Jaylen Brown also had a successful defense. Mikal Bridges' assisted defense also played some advantages at critical moments, whether it was with or without the ball. Mitchell Robinson came on as a substitute and locked in the inside, so much so that the Celtics had to perform a shark-cutting tactic to get him out of the game.

Knicks' substitutions are more freer than usual, even if it means leaving Brunson or Towns on an island with Tatum or Brown, both of them are doing their best to prevent defensive rotations. What the Celtics really want is to get into their game rhythm and create 3-pointers that catch the ball because they don't actually shoot mid-range shots that well. But the Knicks don't give a chance, and Boston's three-pointers shot a lot higher in this series than they did in the regular season.

However, the most pressing problem is that Tatum and Brown are simply not good enough to neither punish opponents alone nor create opportunities for teammates when seeking help. In the first two games, they had nearly as many turnovers (16) as assists (17); and in the second half, they shot 5 of 32 shots outside the box, and they didn't have enough chances to make up for their bad shots elsewhere.

To be fair, while they made some problematic decisions (such as anything Tatum tried to do in the last possession of the ball in the second game), some of their turnovers came when they had enough time to make adjustments:

In fact, in the second game, the Celtics missed 14 consecutive shots in the fourth quarter were almost all good goals that objectively should have been able to score.

But looking at the shooting after shooting, I felt that the mental burden was piled up faster than the Celtics recovering their confidence. It feels like they don’t know how to get out of the dilemma they created themselves, but only know how to keep moving forward.

Once the Knicks start to weaken the Celtics' lead, it is suppressed to pass-free offense, which looks like they don't believe they can execute well enough to maintain or build offensive space advantage. Even admitting that this type of offense trapped is part of the playoff experience, it is not appropriate for a team with championship bloodlines and big-time experience.

In the first two games, the Celtics eventually snowballed the frustration of all their mistakes into a lack of concentration, cohesion and calmness. It has been penetrated into their defense, but this cannot be attributed to the Celtics' own missed shots, because the Knicks' rebound efficiency per round is only 0.7, which is not high compared to the Celtics.

Believe that the Celtics will definitely win this series in the end, they just need to follow the way they know they have to find their own game and resist panic when they encounter difficulties. Although losing home 0-2 at a big score is sometimes not easy to do, they should remind themselves that they are still the defending champions and still the excellent teams in this round of the series, and the only thing they need to solve is fear itself.

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