The Atlanta Hawks overcome a 12-point 4th quarter deficit to defeat the New York Knicks, 107-106, to tie up the series at 1-1. CJ McCollum leads the Hawks with 32 points.
The New York Knicks were cruising to a 2-0 lead in their first round series with the Atlanta Hawks. They were up 12 entering the fourth quarter and were the best fourth-quarter team in the league this season.
After their win in Game 1 two nights earlier, they were 39-0 when leading by at least 12 points in the final period.
But Game 2 was another story, and the Atlanta Hawks found a way to erase that 12-point deficit and escape with a a 107-106 victory at Madison Square Garden on Monday.
CJ McCollum led Atlanta with 32 points, including the go-ahead bucket with 34 seconds left. The Hawks also got a big performance (19 points and a key block) from Jonathan Kuminga off the bench and some huge defensive plays from Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
“It’s a long game,” McCollum said of his team’s comeback after the Knicks were seemingly in control. “You got to play to zero. The way the game is played now, it’s so fast, there’s so many 3s, so many possessions, you always have a chance. You just have to stay within one or two possessions, stay a punch away, and then we’ll throw the last punch.”
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Hawks evened the series at one game apiece…
1. Attacking Brunson bears fruit
The Hawks had kind of let Jalen Brunson off the hook in the first game of this series, not targeting him as much as they could or should have. But they had some success attacking him throughout Game 2, and they went at him for four key buckets down the stretch on Monday.
With the Hawks down six and a little less than five minutes left, Kuminga found himself matched up with Brunson in transition. He didn’t hesitate and used an in-and-out dribble to get past Brunson for a layup.
On the next possession, McCollum had Brunson in front of him in transition. He crossed him over, drew help from Mikal Bridges and found Alexander-Walker in the corner for a 3-pointer that got the Hawks within three.
A few possessions later, Alexander-Walker set a screen for McCollum to get Brunson switched onto the ball. A double-crossover had Brunson flailing and McCollum putting the Hawks ahead by one…
Next possession, same thing, except McCollum blew by Brunson going left. And a runner over Karl-Anthony Towns put the Hawks up three with a minute and a half left.
Brunson has been the primary defender on McCollum for much of these two games. The Knicks tried to change the assignments down the stretch on Monday, but the Hawks were still able to get the matchup they wanted, and it could be a critical cat-and-mouse game going forward.
2. Knicks need to clean up pick-and-roll defense
Brunson’s one-on-one defense isn’t the only defensive issue the Knicks have had in this series. Too often, the Hawks have gotten clean rolls to the basket with insufficient help from the weak side.
The pick-and-roll got the Hawks a couple of key buckets early in their fourth-quarter comeback.
First, Kuminga set a screen for Gabe Vincent, and with Corey Kispert curling off an Onyeka Okongwu off-ball screen in the right corner, Jordan Clarkson was scrambling out of the lane. With Alexander-Walker as the lone spacer on the left side of the floor, there was no help when Kuminga got a pocket pass from Vincent…
On the next possession, OG Anunoby switched an Okongwu handoff to Kuminga, but Mitchell Robinson stayed with the ball. And with the weak-side defenders unaware of the breakdown, Okongwu rolled to the rim untouched…
The Knicks have played some good defense in these two games. The Hawks could not generate good shots in their half-court offense in the first quarter on Monday. But New York also has some things to clean up as the series moves to Atlanta.
3. Knicks dominate the glass
The Hawks ranked ninth in defensive rebounding percentage (70.2%) in the regular season, and they kept the Knicks off the offensive glass in Game 1. But Game 2 was their third-worst defensive rebounding game of the season, with the Knicks retaining 42.6% of available offensive boards and registering 24 second chance points.
Robinson had four offensive boards, Towns had three, and Jordan Clarkson somehow had five in just 11 minutes off the bench, including a pair on consecutive possessions midway through the second quarter. He beat Alexander-Walker to the glass for the first and then tipped in a Brunson miss less than 45 seconds later.
The Hawks out-shot the Knicks in this game, and New York was also just 17-for-27 (63%) from the free throw line, with Robinson accounting for only one of those 10 misses. But New York is aggressive on the glass, and Atlanta is both short and shorthanded on the frontline. And rebounding will be a storyline throughout this series.
“We had a hard time on the defensive glass,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said afterward. “Those plays can really be deflating, but I thought we responded to those. We never quite figured it out, but we dug in in other aspects of the game.”
4. Knicks’ bench struggles this time
When you have two All-Stars, one benefit can be the ability to have at least one of the two on the floor for all 48 minutes. But if you fully stagger their minutes so that’s the case, you minimize the time that they’re on the floor together.
Brunson and Towns can be one of the most lethal pick-and-roll combinations in the league, and the Knicks have scored efficiently in this series (1.20 points per chance) when a Brunson-Towns screen has led directly to a shot, turnover or trip to the line.
So Knicks coach Mike Brown has chosen not to stagger their minutes, and the Knicks have had some stretches with both All-Stars on the bench. Their bench was great in Game 1 on Saturday, when the Knicks outscored the Hawks by a point in a little less than nine minutes with both Brunson and Towns off the floor.
It was a different story in Game 2, when the score was Hawks 23, Knicks 16 when both Brunson and Towns were on the bench. New York shot 6-for-17 (1-for-6 from 3-point range) and had five turnovers in that time.
In a one-point game, Brunson, Towns and Josh Hart all played fewer than 36 minutes, something you’d have a hard time imagining a year ago. The Knicks’ bench has generally been terrific this season, but Miles McBride, Landry Shamet and Jose Alvarado combined to shoot 0-for-7 on Monday.
It will be interesting to see of Brown rests his two All-Stars at the same time again in Game 3 in Atlanta on Thursday (7 p.m. ET, Prime Video).
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John Schuhmann has covered the NBA for more than 20 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Bluesky.
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