Knicks vs. Hawks: 3 Major takeaways from Game 2
By Avishai Sol
The New York Knicks won the mental game
The Knicks bench won game 2 and they did it with the little things. Yeah, Rose got hot, and yeah Bullock hit some big threes, but what was really valuable was that they shut the Hawk’s offense down.
In that first half, Atlanta looked like the 2017 Golden State Warriors. Trae was getting by anyone he wanted, Bogdan Bogdanovic was hitting crazy fallaway jumpers, and Deandre Hunter was spotting up like Ray Allen. 57 points in that first half despite only 45% team shooting for the Hawks. That fell on the heads of the Knicks.
The second half was a different story. New York came out the gates like gangbusters. They rotated hard to close out on shooters, they got chippy with their hands around the rim, and they harassed the Hawk’s ball handlers like they’d insulted their mothers.
Those are the Knicks we know and love! The crowd at Madison Square Garden chipped in too. Screaming DE-FENCE all game long, cheering on big shots, and yelling at Trae Young about the low quality of his hair. Classic.
Going into this series the national media had this to say about the Knicks chances:
"“The Hawks are a more talented team. Young, Collins, Capela, Hunter, that’s a better 4 than anyone the Knicks have. But the Knicks are just tougher. That’s their biggest advantage, and that’s how they can win this series.”"
If the Knicks want to win this they are going to have to be mentally tougher than the Hawks. They are going to have to fight and claw for every crap of an advantage they can find, not because they aren’t good enough, but because that’s what makes them so good.
Madison Square Garden might never have seen a bigger barrel of misfit toys than the 2020-21 Knicks. They will fight, because that’s what they’ve done their entire basketball lives. Randle, Bullock, Gibson, Burks, Quickley, Rose, Noel, Payton, even Barrett, they’re fighters. All of them.
That’s what the team has to do in game 3. More than any new strategy or twist or offensive scheme. The Knicks are going to have to show why they deserve to be where they are. And they will.