The last time the Knicks played a Game 1, in another season when they were dead cert they were finally on their way back to the NBA Finals, they not only lost the game to the Pacers, they started losing a series. Andrew Nesmith went crazy with 6 3-pointers in the last five minutes, Tyrese Haliburton made a crazier shot to tie the game at the end of regulation, the Pacers — once down 17 points that night — finally won in overtime. We didn’t know it at the time, and that quickly, that next season was already in the house.
It will not be the Pacers this time in the latest Game 1 for the Knicks. It will be an upstart Atlanta Hawks team whose best players the Knicks know by now even if a lot of Knicks fans don’t. But one thing hasn’t changed from the Knicks’ last playoff series, whether this is the first round or not:
The Knicks are more convinced than ever that this is their year. But what they need very much to remember is that if it’s indeed true that you can’t win a series in Game 1, you absolutely can start to lose it. Oh, sure. There was another Knicks team facing another Hawks team, first round, back in 2021. Trae Young — now long gone from Atlanta, in basketball witness protection with the Wizards — came into the Garden for the opening game of that one, put 27 on Tom Thibodeau’s team, the Hawks won easily and, in a blink, those Knicks were gone in five.
So these Knicks should understand what they have to do on Saturday night, another rousing postseason Saturday night at the Garden: They need to protect their homecourt advantage and, if possible, walk across the ring to start the fight the way Mike Tyson used to and throw as much punch as they have right away. But you have to know, especially if you saw the last game these two teams played just the other week, that the Hawks won’t make that easy for the Knicks, especially on a night when the Knicks could once again make things really hard on themselves.
And it is quite clear, by the way the Hawks rested players on the occasion of their last regular-season game, that they aren’t afraid of the Knicks, or this match-up. They’re so much better without Young than they were with him at the end of his time in Atlanta. They’ve got two players — Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jalen Johnson — who averaged more than 20 points per game this season. Their big man, Onyeka Okongwu, averaged 22 against the Knicks. And they’ve got a veteran shooter named CJ McCollum, who averaged nearly 19 a game this season and nearly made a halfcourt shot that would have beaten the Knicks 10 days ago.
They also have a terrific coach in Quin Snyder, someone Leon Rose wanted to talk to about the Knicks job after Rose and James Dolan fired Thibodeau, after last year didn’t turn out to be the Knicks year after all. Really, it is ahead of Snyder’s Hawks, the way you could see good things on the horizon for a young Pistons team full of scrap in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs last spring. Only the Hawks aren’t looking down the road any more than the Pistons were when they pushed the Knicks to six hard games. They’re just looking to come into the Garden Saturday night and be the ones to throw the first big punch.
These Knicks have been through a lot. They were convinced, and so were the people in charge, that once the Celtics were out of the way in the spring of 2025, that they were on their way back to the Finals. Then they lost Game 1 to Indiana and, well, you know. Now they are back, with a playoff-tested team they believe is deeper and better than it was a year ago. They still have Jalen Brunson, who scored 30 against the Hawks on April 6. And they have Karl Anthony-Towns, for whom the Hawks seem to have no real answer and who went for 36 points and 15 rebounds against them at the end of December.
Mike Brown obviously likes where his team is coming into his own first playoff series as coach of the Knicks, and from whom so much is expected. Or demanded. But you must understand that Snyder (once Larry Brown’s son-in-law), whose Jazz team upset a favored Clippers team in the playoffs back in 2017, also without homecourt advantage, likes the way his team has come together, as well.
“When we’re playing [the right] way and looking for each other, helping each other on the offensive end, whether it’s a screen or a pass or running for somebody, that’s when we’re a more efficient offensive team, and you know, our guys are really making an effort to execute in those situations,” Snyder said recently.
The stakes are high for everybody at this time of year. But they are as high for Dolan and Rose and Mike Brown, for Brunson and his teammates, as they have been for any Knicks team in a quarter-of-a-century, and that includes last year’s team. Again: Rose essentially ran his team back the way the Yankees ran back theirs. Are the stakes sky high for the defending champ Thunder, and for Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs the way the Spurs have looked this year, particularly against the Thunder? You bet. But a very big bet has been placed on these Knicks, too, and what could feel like a last, big midnight run for this group.
It all starts on Saturday night, at the Garden. A game the place has been waiting for since Game 6 against the Pacers last May. A Game 1 that will feel like a lot more for the New York Knicks.