The New York Knicks find themselves still looking for their first win of the season over the Boston Celtics after Sunday's matchup between these two fierce rivals. Boston defended its home court with a divisional opponent in town, taking down the Knicks 118-105.
This game had the potential to make the seeding race at the top of the Eastern Conference even closer with 3-seed New York looking to gain some ground. Instead, the Knicks walked out of T.D. Garden 9.5 games back of the No. 1 Cleveland Cavaliers and now 4.0 games behind the Celtics for the 2-spot.
However, Sunday's contest had an even bigger impact on the playoffs than just pushing the Knicks further behind in the standings.
Celtics Win Record Tiebreaker Over Knicks for 2024-25 Season With Win on Sunday
Boston has officially secured the head-to-head standings tiebreaker over New York by taking down Tim Thibodeau's squad. The Celtics are now 3-0 over their East Coast foes during 2024-25, giving Jayson Tatum and co. the season series over the Knicks.
Though these teams are a bit more separated in the standings right after this showdown, anything could happen down the stretch, so Boston will gladly take any extra advantage it can get over one of the east's top squads. This guarantees that New York needs to have a better record than Boston to leapfrog the Celtics in the standings, as a tie in terms of wins and losses at the end of the regular season would go in the favor of Joe Mazzulla's group due to the Knicks losing the H2H series.
Being in the driver's seat for the 2-seed versus is an extremely beneficial position. It'd put Boston on the opposite side of the bracket of the 1-seed Cavaliers (or whoever finishes with the top record), and the Celtics would get to face a 7-seed team that had to fight for its life in the play-in tournament.
Meanwhile, falling to the 3-seed likely means taking on the No. 1 seed, assuming they defeat the 8-seed, in the second round of the playoffs. And the first round would be no breeze for the No. 3 squad with a more-rested No. 6 matchup to kick off the postseason.
All of that is to say, Boston just made New York's life much more difficult down the stretch for top-two seeding, and that's a major win for the Celts.