{"id":713270,"date":"2026-04-18T15:27:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T15:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713270\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T15:27:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T15:27:32","slug":"how-hawks-went-from-sellers-to-knicks-first-round-playoff-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713270\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hawks went from sellers to Knicks’ first-round playoff opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not even two months ago, the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> were 27-31.<\/p>\n

They had traded away cornerstone scorer Trae Young<\/a> and star center Kristaps Porzingis<\/a> in a matter of weeks.<\/p>\n

Nobody was thinking about the playoffs for this rebuilding bunch.<\/p>\n

Not outside of the Hawks\u2019 facility, anyway.<\/p>\n

But then something unexpected happened. The Hawks, with a young and versatile core finally getting its chance to shine, started winning.<\/p>\n

And winning and winning and winning.<\/p>\n

And now, the resurgent, sixth-seeded Hawks are standing in the way of the third-seeded, championship-hopeful Knicks<\/a> in the first round of the NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good at adjustments, clearly, being able to have a pretty big trade midseason and then adjust to being the team they are now,\u201d Knicks star Jalen Brunson said ahead of Saturday night\u2019s Game 1 at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been playing great, and we\u2019ve got to be ready for the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atlanta finished the regular season with 19 wins in its last 24 games, resulting in a 46-36 record and the final guaranteed playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

The driving force was a breakout season by forward Jalen Johnson, a first-time All-Star who averaged 22.5 points, 10.3 rebounds and 7.9 assists per game.<\/p>\n

But the Hawks\u2019 turnaround was about much more than one player.<\/p>\n

Without the ball-stopping, score-first Young, the Hawks\u2019 offense became more fluid and their defense became stingier.<\/p>\n

Nickeil Alexander-Walker, a 27-year-old on his fourth NBA team, took advantage of being a featured player for the first time, averaging 20.8 points per game and shooting 39.9% on 3-pointers.<\/p>\n

C.J. McCollum, a 34-year-old veteran whose expiring contract helped facilitate the Young trade, averaged 18.7 points per game for Atlanta.<\/p>\n

Dyson Daniels, the defensive ace who will be tasked with guarding Brunson in this series, remains among the NBA\u2019s best on that end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen all the trades were finalized, and we had our whole team and we knew what our team was going to be moving forward for the rest of the year, I think that\u2019s when we grew together,\u201d Johnson said ahead of Game 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the prettiest at first, and we figured things out. Everybody came in just wanting to learn one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the mid-February All-Star break, the Hawks ranked 17th in defensive rating (114.9) and 25th in opponent scoring (118.6 points per game).<\/p>\n

But since the All-Star break, the Hawks rank second in defensive rating (108.6) and ninth in opponent scoring (110.5 points per game).<\/p>\n

Part of that is because the Hawks played a light schedule during their turnaround.<\/p>\n

But the Hawks\u2019 passing of the torch to an athletic group brimming with potential \u2014 Johnson, Alexander-Walker, Daniels, Onyeka Okongwu and Jonathan Kuminga were all relatively recent top-20 draft picks \u2014 has made them a more well-rounded and dangerous team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey get out in transition just as good as any team, if not the best,\u201d Knicks head coach Mike Brown said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir athleticism. Their length. They\u2019re very aggressive on the offensive glass. Their size and athleticism allows them to switch when they want to defensively and try to do some things defensively, because of their versatility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young, now of the Washington Wizards, became a villain to New York sports fans when he led the Hawks to a first-round victory over the Knicks in 2021 \u2014 a five-game series in which he averaged 29.2 points per game.<\/p>\n

Expect this year\u2019s Hawks to approach things differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really grateful to have this opportunity,\u201d Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said. \u201cWe\u2019ve earned it. And we want to embrace it collectively. When you approach it that way, I think it takes the pressure off any one player.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean underdog Atlanta should be taken lightly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we\u2019ll be a problem for anybody,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not even two months ago, the Atlanta Hawks were 27-31. They had traded away cornerstone scorer Trae Young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,208,3874,7,677,288,2990,304,6,11,2986],"class_list":{"0":"post-713270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-hawks","10":"tag-atlantahawks","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-hawks","13":"tag-jalen-brunson","14":"tag-jalen-johnson","15":"tag-knicks","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nba-playoffs","18":"tag-quin-snyder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116426417313305771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}