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Nick Wright believes that a Knicks playoff series win over the Celtics can change the game.
The FS1 pundit made his case during his “What’s Wright” podcast on Thursday, saying that a Celtics loss would be good “for the health of basketball.”
“It has the potential to be an all-time loss,” Wright said. “It also has the potential to maybe stem the tide a bit against professional basketball simply being a 3-point shooting contest.”
Wright has been a critic of the NBA’s recent shift toward 3-pointers and has repeatedly called on the league to change the rules similar to how the MLB has done to reshape the sport in recent seasons.
“Watching 3-point contests is not as good of an entertainment product as the NBA we grew up with,” Wright said. “Even though the league is deeper than ever, more skilled than ever, in theory, should be better than ever…you might need to be proactive like baseball was against the shift and the pitch clock and all those things.”
The Celtics set an NBA playoff record with 45 missed 3-pointers during their Game 1 loss against the Knicks on Monday, shooting 15-for-60 beyond the arc.
“The Boston Celtics breaking every record for 3-point attempts, if they ended up cruising to a championship, then until the rules change, everyone’s an idiot for not playing that way,” Wright explained.
“But if in the small sample size of a series, the Celtics get whacked by what most people agree is a clearly inferior team … whether it should or shouldn’t change teams’ philosophies and approaches, pro sports are reactionary. And I think it will. So yeah, I’ll say it. For the health of basketball, it’s good if this doesn’t work for Boston.”
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The Celtics continued their 3-point struggles into the second game of the series on Wednesday, shooting just 25 percent from downtown across 40 shot attempts.
Boston’s woes ultimately amounted to a nail-biter 91-90 loss for the Knicks to get ahead 2-0 in the series.
Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals is set for Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden.
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