Mike Brown spent essentially the entire regular season calling the New York Knicks out for their lack of physicality. Even though it was just the head coach's first year with the group, he seemingly wasn't afraid to point out a recurring problem that he felt was connected to their struggles.
But even though New York's lack of physicality lasted through the start of the postseason, they definitely flipped the script on Atlanta in Games 4 and 5 in response to falling down 2-1. A Hawks starter's admission that the Knicks "bullied" them on Tuesday night confirmed that New York's biggest issue may have been solved.
And the roaring start the Knicks got off to at the beginning of Game 6 in Atlanta showed exactly how good this New York group can be.
Dyson Daniels says Knicks bullied Hawks in Game 5 blowout at MSG
It frustrated fans immensely that Brown was foisting responsibility for poor stretches of play onto the team. The group's overall inability outside of the NBA Cup to string together wins against high-level competition was inevitably going to lead to someone, or multiple parties, receiving blame.
But while this iteration of the Knicks is only in their second postseason together as a group, they've consistently shown that they tend to save their best for last.
They ripped an eight-game win streak earlier in the season, but only as a response to a 2-9 stretch that had fans questioning every decision the front office has made in the last several years.
They closed the regular season with the league's best defense from February 1st and on, which was in response to their league-average standing until then.
Ahead of a Game 6 in Atlanta the Hawks didn't exactly give fans much reason for hope with their season on the line.
“I just think their mindset was to come out and try to bully us and be physical. And they did that," Daniels told The New York Post's Jared Schwartz and other reporters.
Should it surprise fans the Knicks showed up, just a little late?
The Knicks did the same to start Game 6, where they didn't have a single first half misstep outside of Mitchell Robinson's ejection. Team governor James Dolan was caught on camera by ESPN reacting to New York's 60-19 lead with an expletive, as 7:11 remained in the first half.
Brown's group digging in their heels and deciding that they were going to start playing like the much more talented team than the Hawks wasn't surprising. Most pundits picked the Knicks to win the series in six games or fewer.
But it did surprise many that Atlanta got out to that 2-1 lead, and that New York didn't wake up until then. Maybe it shouldn't have.
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