The New York Knicks finally showed up, and the Atlanta Hawks paid the price.

Maybe the Hawks were already packing for Cancun. Maybe they thought home-court advantage would be enough to force a Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. Maybe the pressure of a win-or-go-home playoff game proved too much for a young, inexperienced team. Or maybe—just maybe—the Knicks have been the better team all along.

After playing with their food for the first three games of the series, the Knicks decided to cook the Hawks in Game 4. The real Knicks finally stood up. And in doing so, they unveiled a team that looks like a legitimate championship contender—the kind that can run through the Eastern Conference and punch a ticket to the NBA Finals for the first time in 26 years.

This was a statement game. The Knicks held the Hawks to just 15 points in the first quarter, scoring 20 points themselves three times before Atlanta could do it once. Through the first quarter and a half, they forced 12 turnovers while allowing only seven made field goals. They went on a 39-4 run that felt like something out of a video game, building a lead as large as 61 points before halftime.

State Farm Arena turned into MSG South. The loudest cheers from Hawks fans came during rapper Yung Joc's halftime performance of "It's Going Down"—and only two things actually went down on Thursday: the Hawks, and a scuffle between Mitchell Robinson and Dyson Daniels that got both players ejected. Robinson could face a suspension to start the second round, depending on the league's review.

The Knicks can thank the basketball gods for this mid-series transformation into an Eastern Conference powerhouse. Had they drawn the Toronto Raptors in the first round instead of the Hawks, things might have looked very different. But they didn't. They got Atlanta, and they made them pay.

This is the Knicks team fans have been waiting for—and they're just getting started.