The final shot from Boston was a feeble 3-pointer attempted by Payton Pritchard with three seconds remaining, but by then, the celebration had already begun. At this point, thousands of fans inside Madison Square Garden were chanting “Knicks! In! Five!” while the rest were simply cheering as loudly as possible, creating a delightful cacophony of joyful noise.

The ball bounced off the rim and landed into Mitchell Robinson’s hands. There was talk that the final buzzer had sounded, but it was hard to tell. The noise was too deafening for anyone to hear it, and thoughts were drowned in the excitement. No one was eager to head out yet; they were all happy to wait for the next train.

A night like this is for savoring. A night like this is for treasuring.

“Coming out of halftime, we knew we had to step it up,” Josh Hart mentioned after the Knicks triumphed over the Celtics with a satisfying 121-113 victory, “and that’s exactly what we did.”