The Knicks were eight good minutes from cruising out of Madison Square Garden with a 2-0 series lead on Monday night. Instead, the Atlanta Hawks ripped the game out of their hands in the fourth quarter, escaping with a 107-106 win that knots the first-round playoff series at one game apiece and sends a very cranky crowd into the Manhattan night.
What had felt like a comfortable, control-the-pace Knicks outing turned into a full-on collapse down the stretch. The result flips home-court vibes in a hurry, gives Atlanta a jolt of momentum and leaves New York staring at some uncomfortable questions about how it handles the final minutes of a playoff game.
The whole thing swung in the final 40 seconds. CJ McCollum drilled a go-ahead jumper with about 33.5 seconds remaining, then Jalen Johnson followed with a two-handed dunk to push the Hawks to 107-103. Jalen Brunson answered with a 3-pointer with roughly 8.5 seconds left to drag the Knicks back within one. New York had one last possession but never generated a clean look in a frantic scramble, as detailed by CBS Sports.
The box score tells the rest of the story. McCollum finished with 32 points to power Atlanta, while Brunson poured in 29 for the Knicks and Jonathan Kuminga chipped in 19 off the bench, according to StatMuse. Those numbers were paired with timely late-game stops by the Hawks that flipped the fourth quarter in their favor.
How The Finish Unfolded
Atlanta owned the final period, outscoring New York 28-15 and raining in clutch threes to wipe out what had been a double-digit Knicks lead earlier in the night. The Hawks leaned into their pace-and-space identity when it mattered most, spreading the floor, moving the ball and forcing New York to chase.
"The formula for us and our identity has been to run and move the ball," Hawks coach Quin Snyder said after the win, as reported by CBS Sports. In the fourth, that formula left the Knicks a step slow and the Garden crowd watching a lead bleed away in real time.
Series Now Shifts To Atlanta
With the series now tied 1-1, both teams head south for Game 3 on Thursday, April 23, where Atlanta will try to ride its momentum in front of a home crowd and New York will try to remember how to close. The upcoming matchup in Atlanta is locked in on the playoff schedule, per Sporting News.
For the Knicks, Monday's fourth-quarter unraveling brings fresh scrutiny to late-game play-calling and clock management, with Mike Brown and his staff given almost no time to smooth out the rough edges before the series resumes. Atlanta, meanwhile, pockets a confidence-building road win, a split in New York and a real chance to grab control of the series on its own floor.
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