Official Game Thread: Hawks at Knicks -- GAME 1

[lethalweapon3]

A random employee in Atlanta says, “Hey! I’ve got your broom, Right Here!”

 

1989! The number. For young movie director Spike Lee, it was not about to be just another summer. For young 1^st-Team All-NBA star Charles Barkley, it was shaping up to be just another long, bitter one.

Sprawled out on the Spectrum arena floor, the NBA’s second-leading rebounder had carried his 7-seed 76ers as far as he could lug them. That limit was a first-round exit, a three-game sweep, at the hands of Rick Pitino’s New York Knicks, proud winners of a division title for the first time in 18 years.

Barely over two weeks before the Morehouse grad’s new epic Do the Right Thing would premiere at Cannes, exuberant Knicks fans like Lee made the trip down I-95 to pack Philly’s hallowed arena for Game 3, with brooms in tow.

Overwhelmed at turns by Pat Ewing and Charles Oakley protecting the rim, Sir Charles lacked the support to outshine New York’s leading scorer, Gerald Wilkins. After losing Games 2 and 3 by just a single point, the series-clincher in OT, Philadelphia’s final indignity came after the final buzzer, when a smug young Brooklyn-born heathen strutted his way into the stands.

Just a second-year pro from St. John’s, Mark Jackson found a broom near his bench, then “borrowed” it from boastful lower-bowl Knick fans. He then led Charles Oakley, Eddie Lee Wilkins and teammates in a celebratory, inglorious “sweeping” of the Spectrum floor. To boos, as is custom, and select fingers from departing fans of the division rival.

NYC. New York Cockiness, crystallized.

“Instead of acting like they’d been there before… because THEY’d never actually been there before,” recalled Mike Vaccaro, New York Post columnist to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It just ticked off the basketball gods.” Indeed. Another upstart initialed MJ, one with more hubris than Mark Jackson and all the Knicks put together, awaited the Knicks in the next round. Momma, there he goes!

Pitino quickly realized he’d better head to Lexington if he wanted to chase championships, and his hunch proved true. Over the next decade, New York could never escape The Real MJ’s shadow, finally reaching The Finals only after the Bulls’ star took some personal time off.

Catching a break from the Atlanta Hawks in the strike-season playoff of 1999, an aging Ewing’s Knicks bowed to San Antonio in The Finals, leaving the team at 0-for-2 in the 1990s. New York hasn’t come close in the 22 years since. And, believe it, they’ve spent, and waved around, a lot of money just trying to come close.

He was Rookie of the Year in 1988, and an All-Star in his second season, playing for his hometown team, so it was tough for Jackson, having won his first playoff series, to keep his “arrogaNYCe” in check. Jackson would feel bristles on his backside just two years later, as Michael Jordan’s Bulls closed out a not-very-gentlemanly 3-0 sweep at Madison Square Garden.

Traded the next year, essentially for a more seasoned Doc Rivers, Mark would have to wait until age-34 of his 17-year career, in Indiana, just to get into The Finals. Perhaps, instead of a broom, Haughty Mark should have thought about grabbing a postgame microphone instead.

Philadelphians, as you may have guessed by now, haven’t forgotten about The Brooms. The Sixers haven’t been any more successful, over the long haul, than their rivals to the north in reaching the Finals and doing much once they got there. But they do take joy in noting, like hockey fans used to rag the Rangers about “1940!”, about how long it’s been since the big-market bully’s basketball team won the whole shebang. “At least we’ve won a ring since 1973!”, is the cheesesteak-laden refrain.

Amazingly, these fierce Atlantic Division rivals haven’t met in an NBA playoff series since the Knicks literally swept Barkley’s booty off his own floor. Philadelphia enters the 2021 NBA Playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s top-seed. Alex Len and the Wizards of Westbrook will be a handful, but the Sixers and their fans would relish some long overdue second-round revenge.

Oh, and let’s not forget the fellows that won their Game 1 yesterday, just five miles away from Madison Square Garden. The Nets of New Jersey got the last laugh, and their first laugh, over coach Lenny Wilkens’ Knicks back in 2004’s playoffs, a 4-0 sweep. They’ve since moved into posher, newer, closer settings in Brooklyn, spending gobs of moolah and the better part of the past decade making the Manhattan club look like NYC’s red-headed stepchild. Nets fans will tell you the Knicks aren’t yesterday’s news, they’re the prior millennium’s news. Brooklyn is what’s hot in these streets!

That red-headed stepchild, emblematic of the Knicks? He’s grown up to become Michael Rapaport, in a mid-life crisis. The poor man can’t seem to decide which Atlantic Division team to throw his weight behind.

Just four months ago, the part-time actor and full-time blowhard hopped on a podcast and declared the Knicks to be a “bleeping bleep show,” (you can easily fill in the bleeps), adding, “I will have to look at the god-bleep roster again, and be like, Who the bleep are at least eight of these bleeping guys?” This, before praising the Nets’ “culture” and announcing he is now a Boston Celtics front-runner. The Celtics. Because Kevin Durant got in his fee-fees, don’cha know.

You want to guess who will likely be sitting along Gucci Row at MSG today? The longtime Knicks fan and movie director who got kicked out by the owner in 2020 and declared himself a Nets fan, until further notice, of course. The longtime Knicks fan who just got fed up with being a longtime Knicks fan and became, first, a Nets fan, then, a Celtics fan. Must be nice.

A presumptive favorite to come out of the East with all of their all-world stars upright and aligned, the Nets wouldn’t mind putting the foots to Philly in the conference finals. But the prospect of a Gotham-themed Subway Series, with the conqueror heading to the NBA Finals for the first time in decades, or ever, is just too $cintillating a concept to ignore.

The Knicks fans are at the table. The Sixers fans are at the table. The Nets fans are at the table. Banging their utensils. Knives out. Forks out. Staring directly at each other, salivating, ready to dig in.

One NBA team has a good shot at ruining everybody’s appetite.

Beginning today with Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series in New York (7 PM Eastern, Bally Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, TNT… hi, Chuck), if the Atlanta Hawks venture out of this series quashing decades-long dreams of revenge over the Brooms fiasco, if they turn the prospective Subway Series into more of an Amtrak Crescent Series, glum New Yorker fans everywhere, on WFAN radio, on TV, online, are going to become Sue Sylvesters. They are going to create an environment that is so… TOXIC…

When the Hawks’ season abruptly concluded in 2020 with an overtime home loss to the Knicks, there remained dreams of a playoff appearance in 2021, one with a respectable first-round showing and a graceful exit against an established conference contender – maybe Rapaport’s Celtics, or perhaps his next team, the Raptors – summoning blissful memories of 2008 and 2014 inside what is now State Farm Arena and hopes for the future that lies ahead.

Lloyd Pierce was right when, in 2020, the Hawks’ then-head coach adamantly declared, this is a playoff team next year. Not knowing who the additional Lotto-rookie and veteran talents Travis Schlenk could add as upgrades, aside from injured recent pickup Clint Capela, to surround his young core of Trae Young, John Collins, De’Andre Hunter, Cam Reddish and Kevin Huerter. LP was also unaware he would prove incapable of ensuring, as Clyde Frazier might say, that his intuition could come to fruition. He would have no idea, at that time, who would be the assistant taking over to make sure that it did.

It was never his intention when he agreed to join Pierce’s staff, but Nate McMillan has proven to be a superior communicator and strategy designer, what one would hope of an interim coach now in his 21^st NBA season directing a team. Steering back a Hawks club that looked to be veering off course over the first two-and-a-half months of this season, McMillan nearly had the Hawks (41-31; 27-11 officially under Coach Nate) in the same surprising 4-seed slot that his Pacers were in entering the last postseason.

While riding the wave of healthier contributors on the roster, Nate has salvaged the Hawks’ season, and their forward-facing direction, much as he has done at his prior NBA stops. A grateful Atlanta club can reward him with much more than a mere contract extension, beginning with this series.

Under the auspices of the Hawks, McMillan became the NBA’s 20^th all-time winningest coach this season. But after having been swept in three of four postseasons with the Pacers, situations not helped by untimely injuries and star instability, Nate has the worst playoff coaching record (17-36, 32.1%) of any of the 35 most successful regular-season winners.

A win today would help McMillan slip past the only person on that list who comes close – the Czar of the Telestrator, former Atlanta coach Mike Fratello (20-42, 32.3%). A series victory could help McMillan pass Terry Stotts (21-40, 34.4%), his successor at Portland who never saw a playoff game when he was a Hawks coach for three seasons.

Nate looks at none of this stuff, but his legacy as a would-be Hall of Fame coaching entrant is muddled by having just one playoff series win in ten tries, when his 2005 Seattle Supersonics outclassed Rick Adelman’s Sacramento Kings. Hopefully, in 2021, he’ll have some players that will care about sweeping that history under the rug.

As many Atlanta fans expected, the Hawks do get to be a road underdog in their first playoff appearance since 2017. But it turns out that it’s not the Celtics or Raptors who are hosting, nor is it the Sixers, Bucks, or Nets that were predictable adversaries Atlanta would strive to overcome.

Instead, it’s virtually the same Knicks club (41-31, 3-0 vs. ATL to win the 4-seed tiebreaker) that barely eked ahead of the Hawks when the pandemic shut down last season for both teams. A New York club who was summarily dismissed by the Rapaports of the world, when a five-game skid had them at 5-8 to start this year. A club that didn’t need a Kyrie, a KD, or a Harden to regain its regional relevancy.

It’s a New York team that began the season with a different head coach. One that had also been left out of 2021’s Bubble, and who became a parody of himself, while coaching elsewhere.

Tom Thibodeau moved into the NBA’s Top-50 coaching-wins hierarchy with the Knicks’ late-season flourish (16-4 in final 20 games). But much like McMillan, his 24-32 postseason mark isn’t stellar, either. It would assuredly be much better had Thibs not overplayed his hand with young former MVP Derrick Rose, and Brooklyn native Taj Gibson, at two different NBA stops, beginning in 2012. Still, the two seasoned veterans’ presence as Knicks gives the rest of this year’s roster comfort that Thibs is a guy who’s worthy of their trust.

Thibodeau gets the benefit of any doubts around New York because his assistant history, preceding his head coach years, included peak-year turns for the Celtics, Rockets and, going back to the late 1990s, the Knicks. It also helped that Thibs has taken a slow-paced squad with a moribund defense and converted them, with his imprint, into a snail’s-pace team that’s a defensive juggernaut (107.8 D-Rating. 4^th in NBA).

Seventh-year pro Julius Randle (career-highs of 24.1 PPG, 41.1 3FG%, 10.2 RPG, 6.0 APG) has been rejuvenated into the banner-bearing superstar two prior clubs no longer believed was conceivable when they let him swim away in free agency while searching for bigger fish. The sophomore slump that befell Atlanta’s Reddish prior to his injury did not come to pass for his former Duke teammate, R.J. Barrett (17.6 PPG; 40.1 3FG% and 74.6 FT%, up from his rookie-year 32.0 3FG% and 61.4 FT%).

Mix in Reggie Bullock, and sixth-men Rose and Alec Burks, and you have under Thibs’ tutelage a true 3-and-D collective, their five leading active per-game minute-loggers all hitting above a 40-percent clip on three-point shots. Rookie Immanuel Quickley, at 38.9 3FG% (45.3% in his last 20 games), is not all that far behind. Together, they will milk the shot clock dry in halfcourt sets, until Randle discovers a shot, or a teammate mismatch, that his Knicks can exploit.

New York can struggle to control the tempo, though, if they struggle to maintain possession. They finished this season with a 5-21 record when they’ve failed to collect at least 48.6 percent of the game’s total rebounds. These were games where the Knicks had to shoot spectacularly well to give themselves a shot at victory. Collins, who was not active on the boards (3 rebounds in 27 minutes @ NYK on April 21) when New York last defeated the Hawks, 137-127 in overtime, and rookie Onyeka Okongwu can help Capela (25 points, 9 O-Rebs and 13 D-Rebs @ NYK) firmly seize the rebounding edge from Randle, Gibson and Nerlens Noel.

The Knicks will also have a tough time seizing possessions if Young (9.4 APG, 2^nd in NBA) doesn’t hand any to them. Heeding McMillan’s pleas, Trae has trimmed down his turnover rate (2.15 assist/TO ratio pre-, 2.44 post-) since the All-Star Break. Last month, here at MSG, he was enjoying a field day as a passer (14 assists, 1 TO @ NYK on April 21; also 16 of his 20 points in the 1^st quarter) before he and the Hawks were derailed by his third-quarter injury.

Thibs will continue throwing all manner of defenders Trae’s way, from struggling starter Elfrid Payton and Quickley to Frank Ntilikina, to wings in killer-B’s Barrett, Bullock and Burks, while bringing bigs out to meet him at floater range. But Young is reading through the defenses with McMillan’s aid. Further, Trae and the Hawks are capable of dismissing unfair referee calls and non-calls, remaining focused, as easily as they can the audible distractions from New York’s blaring coach and desperate fans.

Trae will have to be cognizant that out-of-flow, adventurous jump shots serve as Hawk turnovers just as effectively as a picked-off pass. He no longer has to be Mr. Big Shot, as he was in the run of play during his Lottery-bound seasons. But he can be Mr. Right Play, reminiscent of an accomplished Jason Kidd leading New Jersey to that desirous first-round sweep of the Knicks in 2004. Trae can help jog those fading memories of Knick fans further by being active on the defensive end, communicating and committing steals and deflections from passes produced out of the paint.

Young has guys who can bring the 3-and-D, in Collins and Bogdan Bogdanovic, to offset the Knicks’ perimeter threats. He has some D-if-not-much-3 support in the form of the returning De’Andre Hunter and former Knick fan Kevin Huerter. And he’s got some 3-if-not-much-D help from former Knick Danilo Gallinari, Tony Snell, and Lou Williams.

Young also has unrelenting lob threats to Collins and/or Capela when he beats his man, off-dribble and around screens, and draws bigs toward him on his drives. Not since Tom Hanks tap-danced on the keys at FAO Schwarz has a young man had so many fun toys around him to play with. But in the serious nature of playoff season, how well Atlanta fares will be tethered to Young’s maturing overall presence.

Atlanta can be taken more seriously as an advancing lower-seed threat, in 2021, if they take defensive intensity as seriously as they do inside State Farm Arena (107.2 D-Rating at home under McMillan, mostly without Hunter or Reddish, since March 1, 5^th in NBA). Up until Pierce’s departure, the Hawks’ D-Rating of 114.1 in away games (24^th in NBA through February 28) was not ideal. But the efficiency got worse under McMillan’s watch (115.5 road D-Rating, 28^th in NBA since March 1).

Injuries and a more arduous midseason road schedule have played their parts. But, by comparison, Thibodeau’s defensive show consistently goes on the road (105.0 NYK road D-Rating before March 1, 109.2 from then on, both 2^nd in NBA). It makes it simpler for pundits to overwhelmingly lean toward the Knicks as the favorites to win this series, a plurality of those prognostications in less than seven games. Active contributions from a well-rested Bogdanovic and Hunter on the defensive end, and steady commitment from Collins and Young to simplify coverage for Capela, can help Atlanta turn the tide in Games 1 and 2.

Attendees at the Mecca of Basketball love their Knicks when they’re playing well, and love to loathe their Knicks when they’re not. Another trait is that they hold in high esteem the entertaining opponents who, individually, seem impossible at times to stop. MJ, Hakeem, Scottie, Reggie, Tim, Kobe, Steph, Harden.

Many a Hall of Fame resume has been shined up on this floor with grand games, and indelible moments, at the expense of the host team. Young will have at least two opportunities to put up a memorable playoff performance at MSG, but it is all for naught if he tries to do too much single-handedly and the Hawks fail to tilt homecourt advantage in their favor. He’ll need to be less of a game-master, and more of a game-maestro.

At the risk of being fined, it’s no mystery that New York’s longtime lovable losers finally showing some competence, and confidence, is a storyline that draws eyeballs throughout America and beyond. Even when not completely packed, arenas chock full of A-List celebrities, B-List celebrities, and C-List hangers-on will be spending of lot of their money and energy creating a cacophony, in New York and down in Georgia, in hopes of granting their team the psychological edge and having the Hawks quickly swept away, enough to probably fulfill the dreams of Knicks-Sixers and/or Knicks-Nets playoff face-offs.

Atlanta already has the right guy with the coachspeak to keep the Hawks calm, cool and connected throughout this series, wherever it leads, in the face of menacing fans of the NBA’s darling mid-Atlantic teams. But in case that’s not enough, here’s some gleeful motivation from another accomplished “coach,” of sorts. Sue Sylvester, take it away!

“It’s not easy to break out of your comfort zone. People will tear you down; tell you that you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. But let me tell you something: there’s not much of a difference in a stadium full of cheering fans, and an angry crowd screaming abuse at you. They’re both just making a lot of noise; how you take it, is up to you. Convince yourself that they’re cheering for you. You do that, and someday, they will.”

And that’s the double truth, Ruth!

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

No idea whether it was good or bad luck, but after cleaning up the Game 1 draft yesterday, I went for a stroll by Bobby Jones Golf Course and walked right past The Chuckster, who was out in the heat filming for a commercial or a movie or something.

I so wanted to scream out, "Picking the Knicks in 4 would be Uncivilized!" lol

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

...and here we go....... PLAYOFF GAME THREAD IS BACK!!!

Thanks for the Regular Season @lethalweapon3

[Spud2nique]

18 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

That red-headed stepchild, emblematic of the Knicks? He’s grown up to become Michael Rapaport, in a mid-life crisis. The poor man can’t seem to decide which Atlantic Division team to throw his weight behind.

mmmkay... he’s hilarious.

[Spud2nique]

21 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

A New York club who was summarily dismissed by the Rapaports of the world,

Bandwagoner.

[Spud2nique]

22 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

“It’s not easy to break out of your comfort zone. People will tear you down; tell you that you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place. But let me tell you something: there’s not much of a difference in a stadium full of cheering fans, and an angry crowd screaming abuse at you. They’re both just making a lot of noise; how you take it, is up to you. Convince yourself that they’re cheering for you. You do that, and someday, they will.”

I got chills. From that quote, the thread and just the fact that game day is finally here. Thanks for preparing us for the 73rd time this year lw3! (Not even counting preseason).

 

GO HAWKS!!!

 

[Spud2nique]

18 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Uncivilized

good guy that would have been awesome I miss those commercials so much. On the same note, or slightly weirder I got that very chance with Lance Armstrong in DC in the summer of 2008, all I could yell out was .. “WHERE’S MATTHEW?” (McConaughey) Damn People magazine we have laying around much have subconsciously seeped into my brain.

 

Lance turned around and gave me a smile. 

[lethalweapon3]

Oh, well, Knickfans. I guess it was worth... a shot?

~lw3

[RedDawg#8]

11 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Oh, well, Knickfans. I guess it was worth... a shot?

~lw3

Me thinks they still somehow find a way to pack the joint. Who needs rules if you are the team playing AGAINST the Hawks.

[Vol4ever]

I would think asking and requiring vaccines is against hippa law.  There are local lawsuits now.  The NBA will lose this one.  

[marco102]

5 minutes ago, Vol4ever said:

I would think asking and requiring vaccines is against hippa law.  There are local lawsuits now.  The NBA will lose this one.  

Hippa only applies to medical professionals with your information. I believe. 

Showing a vaccination card to enter an establishment is not against HIPPA. It's not giving your medical information. It's saying you got a vaccine against a highly contagious virus. 

If you didn't get the vaccine, it's your personal choice, but there isn't much you can do if a business requires proof that you got vaccinated in order to seat you properly.

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by marco102

[Gray Mule]

THE JULIUS RANDLE SHOW - TONIGHT - 7PM

Coming to a TV set near you!  

Be sure to tune in.  NY fans excited about this.  They expect to hurry past the Atlanta Hawks and face their 2nd round opponent.  

However, there is no guarantee that this will work.  In fact, the Hawk faithful expect to put up a real fight and not one of them expects their team to roll over and play dead.  

GO ATL HAWKS !!

 

[sturt]

[RandomFan]

Hawks in 5. 

[JeffS17]

2 hours ago, lethalweapon3 said:

No idea whether it was good or bad luck, but after cleaning up the Game 1 draft yesterday, I went for a stroll by Bobby Jones Golf Course and walked right past The Chuckster, who was out in the heat filming for a commercial or a movie or something.

I so wanted to scream out, "Picking the Knicks in 4 would be Uncivilized!" lol

~lw3

I've ran into him twice at 11st street pub in Midtown -- he was pretty down to earth and surprisingly cool with me interrupting him for a photo. 

[JayBirdHawk]

The Knife has spoken.

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[thecampster]

Gallo breaks out the WarHawk

 

https://twitter.com/gallinari8888/status/1396481562410106886/photo/1

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by thecampster

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]