{"id":1908624,"date":"2026-04-29T10:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T07:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1908624"},"modified":"2026-04-29T10:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T07:10:17","slug":"the-knicks-and-all-the-little-things-have-hawks-backs-against-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1908624","title":{"rendered":"The Knicks and \u2018all the little things\u2019 have Hawks\u2019 backs against the wall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 As far as statement games go, that wasn\u2019t much of a statement by the Atlanta Hawks. It was more like a whimper.<\/p>\n

The New York Knicks smashed Atlanta 126-97 in Tuesday\u2019s Game 5 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series to go up 3-2 and put the Hawks on the brink of elimination. Atlanta trailed by 13 after the first quarter and made nary an utterance afterward, much less any kind of louder oration to offset its disappointment at losing home-court advantage in a Game 4 defeat three days earlier.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve gotta be better, we\u2019ve gotta come out, we\u2019ve got to play harder, \u201c said Dyson Daniels, who was one of the Hawks\u2019 few bright spots Tuesday with 17 points on 7-of-11 shooting. \u201cThey came in and just manhandled us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cTheir defense never let us establish consistently how we could play to beat them,\u201d Atlanta coach Quin Snyder said. \u201cWe had some shots that didn\u2019t go in. (The Hawks were 13-of-42 from 3 and missed seven of their 17 free-throw attempts.) That\u2019s always in play. But for us, I think we need to execute who we are and what we\u2019ve done to be a good team. That\u2019s hard when you play against a team of their caliber.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat level for us, we didn\u2019t hit it. They had a lot to do with that, but that can\u2019t be where it stops. We\u2019ve got to be more committed to that, to play in the way that we know we need to play to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s backtrack 72 hours. Almost to a man, the Hawks were disappointed in themselves after Saturday\u2019s 114-98 loss to New York in Game 4, feeling New York dialed up its intensity to another level, and the Hawks didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just got punked,\u201d All-Star forward Jalen Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted it more, they played harder,\u201d Most Improved Player winner Nickeil Alexander-Walker added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t play Hawks basketball,\u201d center Onyeka Okongwu noted.<\/p>\n

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So you might imagine they would have come out with fire in their eyes at the start of Game 5. But whatever flames they mustered were rather easily doused by the combo of Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson.<\/p>\n

Brunson \u2014 freed of Daniels\u2019 pestering defense by a matchup switch that put Daniels on Towns \u2014 erupted for 39 points, and the Knicks scored in the paint so easily in the first half that they barely needed to bother with jump shots, attempting only seven 3s before the break and 26 for the game.<\/p>\n

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As for the Hawks, the players felt their effort was \u2026 better. But still not where it needed to be to compete with a talented, physical New York team whose size and depth are starting to wear on them.<\/p>\n

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A paper-thin bench hasn\u2019t helped, with Jonathan Kuminga\u2019s trick-or-treat minutes once again being the only source of anything remotely positive from the subs. Tuesday\u2019s backup center lottery winner, Tony Bradley, had no points and five fouls in 13 minutes, while Corey Kispert also served up a bagel in 14 minutes of inaction and Gabe Vincent \u2014 inexplicably on the court for 24 minutes \u2014 took home a minus-20. (While we\u2019re here: Zaccharie Risacher, the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, got another DNP and couldn\u2019t even get run during four minutes of garbage time.)<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, one of the jarring themes of this series for the Hawks is that the starters have lost their minutes in all five games. Atlanta was getting punched in the face long before Mitchell Robinson had a chance to dunk on Bradley or Snyder used some other, um, interesting<\/em> lineups to try to stem the bleeding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think that their mindset was to come out and try to bully us and be physical,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cAnd they did that. They pushed us under on rebounds. They set really good screens. They did all the little things.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seemed notable that Snyder was more upset with the offense than the defense after the game; while the Hawks got cooked by the Knicks, New York had the league\u2019s third-ranked offense in the regular season. Alas, a Hawks team that led the NBA in assists in the regular season has been reduced to a lot more one-on-one play in this series. More than two-thirds of the Hawks\u2019 buckets were assists in the regular season; barely half have been in the playoffs, a figure that is no better than the league-wide playoff average.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just got to be better on that side of the floor to give us a chance on the other,\u201d Alexander-Walker said. \u201cAnd vice versa. You know, if you get rebounds, you can run, and that\u2019s what we do. If we get good shots, we can get back on defense. \u2026 Basketball\u2019s a two-way sport so, like, we gotta be able to propel us kind of into the next possession, every possession. Offensively, defensively, vice versa. And there\u2019s flashes where our offense may have hurt us that allowed them to go on runs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Nickeil Alexander-Walker tries to work against New York\u2019s defense in Game 5. (Brad Penner \/ Imagn Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s also tempting to point to New York\u2019s experience advantage, as this Atlanta group is in its first run together and the Knicks went to the Eastern Conference finals last year, but that part is perhaps not totally true. Four of the Hawks\u2019 top six players have been in the conference finals, and they\u2019ve all been in the playoffs before.<\/p>\n

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Alexander-Walker, for instance, was on the Minnesota Timberwolves team with Towns that trailed the Denver Nuggets 3-2 in 2024 before rallying to win the final two games. He spoke passionately Tuesday about what will be required to repeat the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I\u2019ll say is, more than anything, it\u2019s not when you watch the film, it is not about \u2026 this guy, that guy, you know what I\u2019m saying? Both teams are watching film,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the playoffs, and what I\u2019ve learned from being in the playoffs, it was the mental battles of guys \u2026 like Ant (Anthony Edwards) saying, \u2018I\u2019ll see you in Game 7,\u2019 right after Game 5 and losing the way we did in Game 5. That confidence to say, \u2018Yes, we\u2019re capable of beating this team. We have beaten this team in this series.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gotta keep you up at night. It\u2019s got to be something that you don\u2019t sleep til Game 6 because you just want the moment. You want to bring the fight to them. You don\u2019t like how it went down. I think that great determination to fight, the \u2018want,\u2019 is really what it\u2019s about at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, yes, the Hawks can likely get a bit more help from the shooting-luck gods than they\u2019ve had the last two games (a combined 23-of-83 from 3). They can probably tweak the lineup rotations more optimally than what they threw at the wall in Game 5 and continue to tinker with X\u2019s and O\u2019s to mix up looks on Brunson and Towns.<\/p>\n

None of that will matter if they don\u2019t come into Game 6 with a lot more energy and desperation. The Hawks are already underdogs against a bigger, deeper team with title aspirations. On Thursday, they need to play like it, or their season will end.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 As far as statement games go, that wasn\u2019t much of a statement by the Atlanta Hawks. It was more like a whimper. The New York Knicks smashed Atlanta 126-97 in Tuesday\u2019s Game 5 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series to go up 3-2 and put the Hawks on the brink of elimination. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1908624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1908624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1908624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1908624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1908624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}