Knicks vs. Hawks: Atlanta vows they ‘haven’t played our best basketball yet’

NEW YORK — It takes some good fortune to steal a win the way the Atlanta Hawks did from the New York Knicks in Game 2 at Madison Square Garden. Seated at the podium on Monday, though, the dastardly villain — or conquering hero, depending on your point of view — listed a bunch of possessions that didn’t go Atlanta’s way.

“I missed four wide-open 3s,” CJ McCollum said. “I missed a corner 3, I missed a left wing 3, I missed a left slot 3. I missed a one-legged 3 at the end of the (third) quarter, which is whatever. But Mo (Gueye) missed a left corner 3, JK (Jonathan Kuminga) missed a left corner 3.”

McCollum continued, bringing up the mid-fourth-quarter possession in which the Hawks almost turned the ball over twice but kept New York’s defense in scramble mode for the entire 24-second shot clock. It ended with Jalen Johnson missing an open 3 on the left wing, but Atlanta’s intentions were good.

“Those are great possessions where we did what we said we wanted to do going into the game, and we just missed,” McCollum said.

The craziest part of the comeback/collapse is not that Karl-Anthony Towns barely touched the ball down the stretch for the Knicks. It’s that the Hawks didn’t even play that well. They shot 1 for 12 from 3-point range in the second half, and they grabbed just 50% of available defensive rebounds through three quarters. In addition to good looks that McCollum mentioned, there were several strange lapses in judgment. Late in the third quarter, center Tony Bradley tossed up a wild running hook over Mitchell Robinson that found nothing but air. A few minutes into the fourth, Nickeil Alexander-Walker tried an ill-advised stepback 2 against OG Anunoby in transition and it clanked off the side of the backboard. McCollum threw the ball away twice in the final three minutes and missed a pair of free throws with 5.6 seconds left.

None of this is to say that Atlanta didn’t earn the 107-106 victory or that it shouldn’t have evened the series 1-1. Through two games, the team has defended the Knicks well when it has kept them off the offensive glass. Dyson Daniels and Alexander-Walker, specifically, have done excellent work against Jalen Brunson, who scored 28 points in Game 1 and 29 in Game 2 but has a true shooting percentage of 52.2% and has shot 12 for 34 on 2s. 

In the fourth quarter on Monday, the Hawks varied their pick-and-roll coverages against Brunson and Kuminga defended Towns with physicality. McCollum delivered a straight-up masterpiece on offense, relentlessly attacking Brunson, finishing over Towns and relishing every “f— you, CJ” chant. Knicks coach Mike Brown credited Atlanta for playing with “desperation” and grabbing more 50-50 balls than New York did in crunch time.

“Nobody on our side blinked,” Hawks wing Corey Kispert said. “Nobody flinched. And it’s special to get wins like this when we probably didn’t have our best stuff. We were still able to come out and beat a really good team and split the series in a really tough environment. It’s special. And that momentum is going to carry us forward.”

Heading into Game 3 in Atlanta on Thursday, there are a couple of ways to look at the series. If you are optimistic about New York having a long playoff run, you can say that it controlled most of the first two games and has some low-hanging fruit to pick (i.e. the non-Brunson, non-Towns minutes; Towns’ usage). If you see the Knicks as vulnerable in this matchup, though, then the Hawks have put themselves in a sweet spot. 

Johnson said they “thugged it out” to tie the series, but “we still haven’t played our best basketball yet.” 

In the locker room before Game 2, Alexander-Walker sounded pretty zen about the position that he and the Hawks were in. “Everybody knows I’m my own harshest critic,” he said, but that doesn’t mean he was beating himself up after the series opener. He averaged a career-high 20.8 points in the regular season, but he’s not putting pressure on himself to score a certain amount every night. What matters, he said, is if he’s taking good shots, if he’s doing the right things. 

“If it doesn’t work out, try again,” Alexander-Walker said. “But I have no pressure. And no matter what, this is the game I love. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Just make the most of that.”

Alexander-Walker reached the conference finals the last two seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves. In the playoffs, he said, “simplifying the game” is “your best friend,” and it is rare that one tactical adjustment will be “the answer or the antidote” after a loss. He liked that Atlanta had finished Game 1 playing with force, even though its late run — cutting a 19-point New York lead to eight — wasn’t enough to change the outcome.

“It’s about being in tune with the game,” Alexander-Walker said. To him, that means having a feel for what’s needed on a given possession and committing to doing exactly that. “Did I run hard enough so that this guy can’t switch out? Am I setting good screens so that he can’t hedge? These are the things that sound so minute when you’re talking about, ‘How do you stop Jalen Brunson? How do you this, that and the third?’ All right, set good screens, let’s cut, let’s move the ball. And then all of a sudden, through those things, you’re noticing wow, we’re doing what we set out to do.”

In Game 2 on Monday, the Hawks were in tune enough to turn the game around and flip the series on its head, even though neither Alexander-Walker, the favorite for Most Improved Player, nor Johnson, an All-NBA candidate, got going offensively. Hawks coach Quin Snyder praised their selflessness in deferring to McCollum and a game plan that was working, but that doesn’t mean Thursday’s game will look the same. 

Maybe Johnson, who made a few aggressive scoring plays in the second half, will more effectively use his size advantage against Josh Hart. Maybe Snyder will empower both Johnson and Alexander-Walker to initiate more often and go at Brunson and Towns themselves. Maybe Brown will prioritize getting the ball out of McCollum’s hands, opening up opportunities for them to attack with an advantage.

Johnson knows that he hasn’t been killing it in his first series in a featured role, but said that it has been “fun” to be in the playoff crucible and see on film what the Knicks are throwing at him. “It gives you a challenge,” he said. “It gives you something to look forward to next game. Obviously, there’s always room for improvement. That’s the best part about it.” If he puts up a 30-point triple-double in the next game — he had three of them in the regular season — then nobody will be talking about his underwhelming start.

Hart, who has been Johnson’s primary defender, said the Knicks are frustrated about the loss at MSG, but they have “high-character guys who respond well,” noting they’ve been in this situation before (they lost Game 2 of their first-round series against the Detroit Pistons last year). Hart also said they need to make sure Towns is more involved on offense. If they play a full 48 minutes at a high level in Atlanta, maybe Monday’s game will look like a blip.

To the Hawks, though, that was no blip. McCollum “honestly thought we were gonna win Game 1,” he said, and, when they were down in Game 2, he told his teammates to “stay a punch away, and then we’ll throw the last punch.” 

If nothing else, the come-from-behind win was a confidence builder. Their hope — and the Knicks’ nightmare — is that it was also a turning point.