BOSTON — Do you celebrate something you expected to accomplish?
For the Knicks, the answer is yes — but they know there are bigger fish to fry in New York City.
The Knicks clinched their second consecutive playoff berth and their third in the last four seasons on Wednesday night, when a 19-point Miami Heat loss to the Dallas Mavericks made it mathematically impossible for New York to finish any lower than sixth in the East.
With three games left on the schedule (including Thursday’s matchup at TD Garden against the No. 1-seeded Celtics), the Knicks can take a second to exhale.
“We celebrated,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said ahead of tipoff against the Celtics on Thursday. “We just wanted to be aware. So as you go, you’re just checking the boxes. You take it one day at a time.”
But only one second. Maybe a fraction of a tick for a team still with much to lose if they drop the ball in the final frame of the regular season.
The work does not end with clinching the playoffs. Rather for team hoping to one-up itself and last season’s second-round playoff appearance, there’s much more meat left on the bone of the 2023-24 NBA season.
“[Clinching the playoffs means] Nothing,” said Knicks forward Josh Hart. “It’s nothing that — we expected to do it at the beginning of the year. It’s cool. We’re going to the playoffs.”
The Celtics are the only team who’ve truly earned a celebration.
Boston is home to a team 14 games better than the next-best Eastern Conference squad. If the Celtics punted their final two regular season games, they would still finish with a better record than every other team in basketball.
The Knicks do not have the same luxury.
If the Knicks lose their final three games, they can fall as far down as sixth, and if they win out — and get some help from the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee Bucks — New York can finish with the No. 2 seed.
The last time the Knicks finished second in the East, Carmelo Anthony led the team to a 54-win season and a second-round playoff appearance.
“It’s not over. You have to go through the finishing line,” said Thibodeau. “And for some teams — the Celtics have built up a big cushion, so they’re in a different category — but for the rest of us, we’re all fighting for seeding and home-court and that sort of thing. So that’s our challenge.”
The Knicks have two more games left on the schedule after Thursday’s potential Eastern Conference Finals preview: They host the Brooklyn Nets at Madison Square Garden in the second leg of a back-to-back on Friday, then host the Chicago Bulls in the season finale on Sunday.
Clinching a playoff berth is cool — but the Knicks have bigger fish to fry, the fish being their own playoff run that came crashing down in the second round courtesy of the Miami Heat last season.
“[Making the playoffs] was something that was expected,” said Hart. “So it’s cool, but I’m not gonna sit there and be like oh my god, I’m so excited. That’s what we expected to do.”
