Mike D’Antoni took great pains Sunday morning to emphasize that the Celtics want to play at their pace, which is far slower than the Knicks want to play and that whichever team can get the other to play at its pace is the key to the series.
“It’s going to come down to, can we keep our pace up?” D’Antoni said, going on to say the Celtics “really can’t control [that].
“After they shoot the ball, they can’t control how we take it out, get it up the floor, how we move through our offense, how we move the ball and when we shoot. They can only control after that.
“And I’m not worried about what they do. I’m worried about what we do. … We just have to have our possessions at a quick pace, the ball moves, that we don’t get into a rope-a-dope kind of [pace] where we’re laying on the ropes.
“They do that, all we’re going to do is be mad at the referees, we’re going to be mad at the world and we’re going to be hurting.
“If we can avoid that by being disciplined, by being quick anyway, even though we’re tired or the pressure gets to you, you’re still jabbing and moving, we’ll be fine.”