Knicks Make 'No Statement' With Game 4 Win, 3-1 Lead

The seventh's anything but Heaven for the New York Knicks.

The Knicks earned their seventh victory of the 2025 postseason on Monday night, downing the Boston Celtics by a 121-113 final in Game 4 of the regional rivals' Eastern Conference semifinal set at Madison Square Garden.

Not only do the Knicks own a wholly unexpected 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series but they're on the cusp of the halfway mark to a long-sought third championship—reaching such a landmark in consecutive seasons for the first time since the turn-of-the-century. With one more win, they'll return to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2000's six-game loss to the Indiana Pacers.

One wouldn't know it, however, analyzing the comments in the Knicks locker, room where jubilant stoicism was the name of the game.

May 12, 2025; New York, New York, USA; New York Knicks guard Josh Hart (3) reacts after scoring a basket in front of Boston Celtics center Al Horford (42) in the second half during game four of the second round for the 2025 NBA Playoffs at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Though a common theme discussed around this series has been the Knicks supposedly killing narratives centered around their their grit and identity, Josh Hart believed that Monday didn't teach them anything they didn't know about themselves already.

“No statement. No statement," Hart said of the Game 4 win, per Barbara Barker of Newsday. "We’re a good team. We’ve known that all year. “We’ve just got to build from this. Obviously, we’re up 3-1, but that doesn’t mean anything. We’ve got to go into this next game with a sense of desperation, a sense of urgency from the jump ... No statements, just us getting better.”

To Hart's point, the Knicks had to erase yet another big Boston lead en route to victory. Even with a respectable 52 percent metropolitan output in the opening frame, Jayson Tatum and Derrick White united to outscore the Knicks on their own over the opening dozen, which ended with New York down by 11.

Fortunately for those who paid four or five figures for supposed "cheap seats," further clutch antics from Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson rendered the slow start long forgotten and created volume levels not obtained at Madison Square Garden in quite some time.

The Knicks captain even noticed a few of his teammates trying to join in the celebration—and was all too willing to play killjoy, especially after he publicly professed that a 2-0 lead may have lulled New York into a false sense of security that indirectly yielded a 22-point defeat in Game 3, Manhattan's lone loss in the series to date.

"I was actually telling everyone to get off the court. I was like, it's nothing to celebrate," Brunson, he of 39 points and 12 assists, said, per Chris Herring of ESPN. "I think [tonight] was a sense of urgency, desperation, knowing that we had a great opportunity against a really good team."

"We have a team that's still fairly new this year, and we have a long way to go be the best team we can be. There's always time to learn for us. We're never satisfied, and that's the mentality."

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