Eventually, the talent discrepancy revealed itself. When it did, it began to look like a mismatch.
And the Knicks quickly blew the game wide open.
The Hawks were mostly as advertised — young, athletic, full of confidence. And this wasn’t necessarily a vintage Knicks showing — there were a few areas of concern.
Their defense, for one, was porous until a dramatic second-half turnaround.
They were made to sweat a bit. But in the second half, they dragged the Hawks into the deep end and watched Atlanta sink.
They outscored the Hawks by nine points in the second half — which was really much more before the final two minutes — en route to a 113-102 Game 1 win Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
But these Knicks don’t often make anything easy. They led by 19 with 3:14 left in the game before the Hawks ripped off an 11-0 run to cut their deficit to eight with 1:39 left and make it interesting.
The Knicks stabilized and avoided catastrophe.
Jalen Brunson came out firing and had 19 points — on 8-for-11 shooting from the field and 3-for-3 shooting from 3-point range — in the first quarter. He was also the only Knick to play the first quarter.
But it was actually the start of the fourth quarter — with Brunson on the bench — that the Knicks had their best stretch.
They outscored the Hawks by seven points — to take a 16-point lead — before Brunson checked back in with 5:07 left in the game.
Brunson only went 1-for-11 from the field after the first quarter and finished with 28 points.
The Knicks led by as many as 11 early in the second quarter, but, facing their first adversity of the postseason, the young Hawks used a 19-8 run to tie the game. They outscored the Knicks by four points in the second quarter and, after Onyeka Okongwu’s buzzer-beater 3-pointer, only trailed by two at halftime.
The Knicks, though, tightened up defensively and shut down the Hawks coming out of the break. They held Atlanta to 8-for-23 shooting from the field in the third quarter as they rebuilt their lead.
And that’s golden territory for the Knicks. They are the best fourth-quarter team in the NBA and entered Saturday 46-2 when leading to start the fourth quarter. Now, they’re 47-2 – and 1-0 in the postseason.
It was a bit of a roller-coaster for Karl-Anthony Towns, who did not score his first points until 4:50 left in the second quarter.
He did not hit his first field goal until 2:53 left in the second quarter. Towns averaged 28.5 points in the two regular season games he played against the Hawks – his most against any opponent. For most of the first half, Onyeka Okongwu won that matchup.
But Towns came alive for 19 points in the second half and finished with 25 points and 14 rebounds.
OG Anunoby was a steady presence all game and added 18 points and eight rebounds for a mostly balanced Knicks scoring attack. He briefly came out of the game in the third quarter after rolling his left ankle – the same left ankle that forced him to exit the Knicks’ penultimate game — but didn’t go back to the locker room and quickly returned.
On the Hawks’ first possession of the second quarter, CJ McCollum was given a technical for kicking Brunson right in the midsection while taking a jump shot. Brunson stayed down on the ground in pain for a few moments.
For all that’s been made about the Hawks’ youth, it was actually the veteran McCollum who most hurt the Knicks. With Brunson mainly guarding him, McCollum finished with 26 points. Jalen Johnson added 23 points for the Hawks.
Trailing by seven, the Hawks went Hack-A-Mitch with 5:44 left in the third quarter. Mitchell Robinson made 1 of 4 free throws before the Knicks took Robinson out of the game. But that’s where the Knicks began to take control of the game.
The Hawks asked a few questions of the Knicks. But the Knicks had plenty of answers.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
