Dan DevineSenior writerTue, April 21, 2026 at 9:29 PM UTC·12 min readNEW YORK — Mike Brown tried to make it as clear as he could: The reason to win Game 2 wasn’t “to protect home court,” or “to avoid losing momentum,” or “to prevent his New York Knicks from stepping on the same rake that Tom Thibodeau’s version did against the Heat in 2023, or against the Pistons and the Pacers last year.” It was a little simpler than that. A little more … Herm Edwards-y.
“It really doesn’t matter, to me, that we’re home or on the road,” Brown said during his pregame press conference on Monday night. “We want to win the freakin’ game because that’s the next game in front of us. And it’s extremely important to try to go attack it that way, and that’s how we’re going to attack it.”
For most of the first three quarters, the Knicks did attack it that way.
New York’s starting five — which had been outscored since February’s trade deadline, and whose relative ineffectiveness has been a point of contention for these Knicks across two years and two head coaches — was controlling the terms of engagement against an Atlanta starting lineup that had been one of the league’s best since coming together after the All-Star break. The Knicks were leaning on the Hawks, with centers Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson (and energizer guard Jordan Clarkson, who just sort of became an offensive rebounding force over the final 25 games of the season) leveraging their size advantage over Atlanta’s shorter bigs to pull in 10 offensive rebounds through three quarters — a whopping 50% offensive rebounding rate that led to 22 second-chance points.
Jalen Brunson and the Knicks head to Atlanta with the series tied 1-1. (Brad Penner-Imagn Images)
Josh Hart was contributing his customary energetic all-around work — rebounding, facilitating, pushing the pace — while continuing to play in-your-jersey defense on Hawks All-Star Jalen Johnson, who’d scored a quiet 11 points on eight shots through three quarters. Mikal Bridges, forever wearing the five-first-round-picks millstone around his neck whenever he doesn’t score a lot, was continuing to keep Nickeil Alexander-Walker from finding daylight, limiting the Most Improved Player candidate to just 2-for-10 shooting amid an extended frigid streak to start the series.
The Knicks were shooting 52% from the floor, holding the Hawks to 43% shooting, and scoring 128.2 points per 100 possessions — a rate of offensive efficiency that would’ve led the league during the regular season. When Hart rebounded a missed CJ McCollum pull-up with just over five minutes to go, they had a 93.4% win probability, according to Inpredictable.
“We just got to lock in a little bit better,” Brown said after the Knicks squandered a 12-point fourth-quarter lead and home-court advantage — again — in a 107-106 Game 2 loss. “In a playoff game, it’s tough to win against a good team when you shoot 60% from the free-throw line. In a one-possession game, we missed 10 free throws. One-possession game, we had 14 turnovers for 18 points.”
HawksATL6Final1234ATL23312528NY32293015Final106KnicksNY3Tied 1-1“We just got to play better with the lead,” said Knicks star Jalen Brunson, after a fourth quarter in which the offense he captains scored just 15 points in 22 possessions — a ghastly 68.2 offensive rating — and in which Jonathan Kuminga and CJ McCollum took turns torching him off the dribble for buckets in Atlanta’s rampaging comeback. “That's twice in the fourth quarter, now, that we've done that.”
“I think just help each other out,” said Bridges, who had a chance to wrest the title of hero away from McCollum with a would-be game-winning jumper that rimmed out. “It’s all five of us out there — I think we just got to communicate, help each other and make it difficult for them.”
“They hit shots and we didn’t make shots,” said Towns — who, notably, only took two of them during the final frame, missing both. Asked about his second consecutive quiet finish, the All-Star center said, “Just, you know, the opportunities just didn’t come around to shoot it. But at the end of the day, I trust everyone in this locker room to shoot the ball.”
OK, so: missed free throws and costly turnovers; a lack of attention to detail and process on the offensive end; insufficient communication and connection in defensive coverages; the vicissitudes of a make-or-miss league. Kind of a lot of action items on that clean-it-up punch list for the Knicks.
Any of them stand out as the most frustrating, Josh?
“Nah, just … all of it,” said Hart, who finished with 15 points, 13 rebounds, 6 assists and 1 steal. “This was a game we should have won, and in the playoffs, you can't give away games.”
The Hawks deserve their fair share of credit for taking it: for McCollum’s steady hand, quicksilver handle and feathery touch on the floaters and pull-ups that sunk the Knicks; for Kuminga’s physicality on both ends of the floor in a command performance off the Atlanta bench; for Johnson’s ability to weather a frustrating start to the series and come through with three huge buckets in the final six minutes.
But when you fritter away a double-digit lead at the start of the fourth quarter for just the second time in postseason franchise history, and a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter for the second time in 11 months — and everybody and their mother remembers the first two — even a responsible ceding of credit to the victors doesn’t cover the totality of the circumstance. Not by a long shot.
The most reasonable diagnosis: Bad scene, everyone’s fault.
With the Knicks holding a 12-point lead after three quarters, Brown elected to start the fourth quarter with both Brunson and Towns on the bench. It’s something he rarely did throughout the regular season, but started to do more as the season wore on; lineups without either of New York’s two All-Stars played 182 minutes after the All-Star break, outscoring opponents by 25 points.
Those units — often featuring OG Anunoby as the lone starter, with Robinson at the 5 and Clarkson, Deuce McBride and Landry Shamet as the three guards — skew defense-first, without a traditional point guard or primary shot creator. The conceit: Steal a few minutes at the start of the second and fourth quarters, try to get by with stops, transition play and offensive rebounds, and then be able to bring Brunson and Towns back together, affording New York more minutes with both of its stars on the floor — minutes the Knicks have won comfortably this season, with an elite offense — in which to continue emphasizing their resurgent two-man game.
“We’ve played that lineup quite a bit since the end of the season, and that lineup’s been pretty good,” Brown said.