Knicks relying on desperate plan to finish off the Celtics

The hype was massive.The stakes were incredibly high.

Anticipation was through the Garden’s roof.After consecutive rallies on the road from 20 points down, Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was billed as the Knicks’ biggest home game in 25 years.Friday night will dwarf that Saturday afternoon showdown.Friday night, the Knicks return to MSG to play a monumental basketball game.Friday night, Tom Thibodeau’s team can send the defending champion Celtics home.

They can book their first trip to the conference finals since 2000, close out a playoff series at the Garden for the first time since 1999 and start to realistically dream about reaching the sport’s biggest stage: the NBA Finals.When this series began, the Knicks were major long shots.Just getting to a Game 6, most experts believed, would be a success.

The first two games of the series turned that narrative on its head.Then the Knicks rallied from a 14-point, third-quarter deficit in Game 4 and Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles tendon in the final minutes.Suddenly, they were expected to get by the Celtics.

Expectations changed.And along with those expectations comes pressure — an immense amount of pressure on these Knicks to avoid another trip to Boston for Game 7 on Monday night.The Knicks are favored for the first time in this series.“We just gotta play desperate.

I don’t think we did that [in Game 5],” Mikal Bridges said after the Knicks failed in their first shot to eliminate the Celtics on Wednesday night.“We gotta come out aggressive throughout the whole game.”In what has been a strange postseason for the Knicks, this has been a bizarre series.

The Celtics have led for almost the entirety of it.Their two wins have come by a combined 47 points.

The Knicks trailed big in their three victories.In Game 5, they led after the first quarter for the first time, went up nine early in the second quarter, then were crushed the rest of the way.They defended the perimeter poorly, the off...