New York Knicks vs Boston Celtics live updates: Score, highlights, analysis, news for 2024 NBA Opening Night

The opening game of the NBA season is over. Mercifully for Knicks fans.

Boston took an early lead and turned this into a boat race, eventually winning 132-109, with most of the fourth quarter being garbage time.

Jayson Tatum led all scorers with 37 points, hitting 8-of-11 from 3, plus he had 10 rebounds. Derrick White added 24 points and Jaylen Brown had 23.

Jalen Brunson scored 22 and Deuce McBride had the same off the bench for the Knicks.

Welcome to garbage time.

Both teams only have one starter on the floor (Al Horford for Boston, Mikal Bridges for New York), and the game is over in every way except for the official clock. With six minutes left on the clock the score is 130-98 Boston.

Jayson Tatum has 37 points and has hit 8 3-pointers, Derrick White has 24 and the Celtics are cruising to an opening night win against a team that was expected to be a threat to them.

Boston is up 113-87 after three quarters.

Jalen Brunson had 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting to lead the Knicks, with McBride scoring 20 off the bench. The Knicks’ offense hasn’t been bad, but the defense cannot get a stop.

I’d say this is getting ugly for the Knicks, but I think we passed that line long ago.

Boston pushed its lead out to 30 points, 108-78, with just more than two minutes left in the fourth. Soon we can start asking when the coaches should pull their starters and save them for what is a long NBA season.

The case against Jayson Tatum for MVP comes down to this: The Celtics are too good. There is too much talent around him, so someone like Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid (in years past) had to carry more of their team’s load, while Tatum had help from Jaylen Brown and others.

On opening night, Tatum has looked every bit the MVP.

Boston leads 99-73 with 4:45 left in the third.

When a team is losing like the Knicks are losing on opening night, it’s not one thing. For example, their offense will look better coordinated and improve as the season moves along.

What is hurting them is on the other end — the Celtics are destroying the Knicks in cross-matches. Early in the second half, KAT got switched onto Jaylen Brown, resulting in an in-rhythm 3 for Boston. Every Celtic recognizes the switch, finds the matchup, and exploits it.

Boston leads 86-60 with 8:50 left in the third.

Last season, the New York Knicks led the league grabbing the offensive rebound on 29.4% of their missed shots, an average of 12.7 offensive boards and second chances a game. This summer, the Knicks let Isaiah Hartenstein walk — he is a beast on the offensive glass — and traded Donte DiVincenzo and Julius Randle, two players who would hit the glass hard.

Against the Celtics, the Knicks had 1 offensive rebound in the first half.

Those were easy points a season ago, and while this Knicks offense can make up that gap in other ways, the change is shocking.

Through 24 minutes, it feels like last season in Boston.

The Celtics picked up where they left off — celebrating a championship on the parquet — by blowing out New York in the first half of the season opener, 74-55 at the half.

Jayson Tatum has 25 points, Jaylen Brown 12 and Derrick White 11. Boston shot 17-of-32 (53.1%) from 3 in the first half. Those 17 3-pointers tie the Celtics franchise first-half record.

The Knicks are shooting 57.9% from the floor but are losing the math game, shooting just 4-of-14 from 3, plus their defense is getting torched.

Tatum has been on fire to start the game shooting 4-of-6 from 3 and 5-of-7 overall to score 15 early points and spark the Celtics to a 19-point lead after one quarter.

Is it too early for Knicks fans to start freaking out?

The Knicks started 1-of-9 from 3 while the Celtics were 10-of-19 from beyond the arc and that has Boston winning the math game and ahead 43-24 after one quarter. After the trade for Karl-Anthony Towns, there were questions about the Knicks’ defense, and those have looked valid through one quarter.

The rest of the league should really thank Steve Kerr for lighting a fire under Jayson Tatum.

He has nine early points on 3-of-5 shooting (2-of-4 from 3) and is just out there making plays. On the night he’s celebrating winning a ring and coming off a summer where he picked up a gold medal, too.

It’s a real clash of styles early: 8 of Boston’s first 14 shots are from beyond the arc, they have hit four of them. This fits with Boston’s style, they led the league in percentage of shots from 3 last season.

The Knicks are 0-of-1 from 3 through their first 11 shots.

The result is Boston is up 21-14 with 5:04 left in the first.

The Celtics are living up to the Mazzulla-ball billing early, with four of their first six shots being from 3. The Celtics knocked down three of them, Derrick White has five points, and the Boston leads at the first timeout 11-8. There’s 9:26 left in the first quarter.

Check out those diamond-studded championship rings — they are huge and blinding.

Watch Porzingis, Holiday and more get their rings.

NBA banner and ring night is always a little strange, because the team is celebrating a career highlight from five months ago, then they have to pivot to playing the first game of the new season.

Jayson Tatum knows how to walk that line and what Celtics fans want to hear — “Let’s do it again.”

The Celtics enter this season as the heavy favorites to repeat, a team that lapped the field last season — winning the East by 14 games and losing just three playoff games total — and brings back their top seven rotation players (once Kristaps Porzingis returns from foot/ankle surgery, around Christmas).

Now they have to live up to that billing.

On the broadcast, TNT cut away, but people in the building got a good view of Boston Celtics championship banner No. 18 going up to the rafters.

People who make their living on social media and with videos know how to make an entrance.

Kai Cenat knows how to make an entrance.

The Celtics are -5.5 favorites to beat the Knicks tonight, with the total set at 221.5, according to our partners at Bet MGM.

If you’re considering placing a bet on tonight’s NBA opener, here are a few facts to consider, courtesy of the staff at NBCSports.com/betting:

• Boston is 5-1 straight up in their last 6 season openers.
• The Knicks are 2-4 in their last 6 season openers.
• The Celtics have won four straight against the Knicks at TD Garden, and seven of the last ten overall in this rivalry.
• The Celtics covered the spread in 57% of their games as home favorites last season.
• Five of the Knicks’ last seven games at TD Garden have gone OVER the Total

Here are a couple of bets worth thinking about, via the staff at NBCSports.com/bet:

• Josh Hart OVER 12.5 rebounds and assists. Hart exceeded that number in eight of the Knicks 10 games to close out last season.
• Jalen Brunson to record a double-double: Yes: +295

Jaylen Brown has arrived at the TD Garden — and the man has style. Check out the custom Celtics jacket.

The Knicks brought in Mikal Bridges as one of the players who can get them over the hump of the Boston Celtics and back to the NBA Final for the first time since the 1990s. However, over the course of his career, Bridges has struggled a little more against Boston than he has against the league as a whole.

For his career (15 games total), Bridges had averaged 15.7 points and 4 rebounds a game against the Celtics.

Last season, playing for the Brooklyn Nets, Bridges averaged 17 points and 4.3 rebounds a game, but was held to a 51.1 true shooting percentage (the league average was close to 57).

Much as he has against the rest of the league, Jayson Tatum has had a lot of success playing against New York.

For his career, Jayson Tatum has averaged 23 points, 7 rebounds and 3.8 assists a night in 25 games against the Knicks.

Those numbers were higher last season, when he averaged 26.2 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.8 assists a game against the Knicks (he played in five games between the sides.

During the Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant era, the Golden State Warriors won back-to-back NBA titles in 2016-17 and 2018-18 (the Warriors went to five straight finals from 2015 to 2018, winning three).

Before that, it was LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2013. The Kobe Bryant/Paul Gasol Lakers won back-to-back titles in 2019 and 2010 under Phil Jackson, while the Shaq/Kobe Lakers won three straight titles from 2000 to 2002.