Only one team heard the Madison Square Garden clamors for defense all night. It wasn’t the team in orange and blue.
With their backs against the wall, facing elimination at home, the Knicks couldn’t get a stop when they needed it most. The defense caved, they gave up second-chance points, and their best players didn’t deliver. It was a recipe that doomed the Knicks from the start in their 103-89 loss to the Hawks in Game 5 on Wednesday.
The Knicks were eliminated from the playoffs, a postseason run few expected at the beginning of the season and even fewer expected to continue beyond the budding offensive powerhouse from Atlanta.
“It’s a long year and they put a lot into it,” Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “So we’ll take two to three weeks and just get away, decompress, re-energize, and then we’ll start talking about the plans for the summer and what we have to do next.”
For the Knicks to have beaten these Hawks, they would have needed to be perfect. Trae Young has become best-player-on-the-floor good, so good a defensive mastermind had no answers for him. Nate MacMillan, who only recently took over as head coach, got his young players to play defense. John Collins has been as well-rounded a forward as there is, and the Hawks spaced the floor with shooters all series. They proved to be a sound team on both ends of the floor, which required the Knicks’ best punch if their hope was to advance.
But the Knicks were far from perfect in these playoffs, and it would have been unrealistic to expect them to pull a 180 in an elimination game. Randle, who didn’t have an exceptional game through the first four, was short of exceptional in Game 5. Despite his stat line of 23 points and 13 rebounds, he turned the ball over eight times, including several unforced errors in reading the Hawks defense. His performance in the playoffs gave the Knicks more questions than answers when his free agency rolls around next season.
Randle repeatedly said the series loss was too much to process in his postgame interview. He will look at the film and pinpoint areas he can improve.
RJ Barrett, who scored 21 points in the Game 4 loss, couldn’t be found in Game 5 and shot 5-of-14 from the floor and just two-of-six from downtown. Derrick Rose, who tallied 91 points through the first four games, left his cape in Atlanta in Game 5. He shot just 3-of-11, unable to solve the Hawks’ defense. Immanuel Quickley gave the Knicks some life off the bench, but it was too little, too late.
“They just had a great scheme,” Randle said after the game. “Credit to them. They played extremely well, shot the ball well. They made more plays than we did.”
One thing’s for certain: Young now owns real estate at 4 Penn Plaza. He waltzed into Madison Square Garden in Game 1 and silenced Knicks fans, one big shot or trip to the foul line after the other. In the closeout Game 5, he looked into the crowd with every made basket, smirking at Knicks fans or putting his finger to his mouth like Reggie Miller choked himself in the playoffs in 1995.
Young finished with 36 points on 28 shots, breathing life into Taj Gibson’s pregame prophecy. Gibson wasn’t the only one left clueless on how to slow down the Hawks’ All-Star. Young hit deep threes, floaters and foul shots all night, frustrating a Knicks defense without a single player capable of staying in front of him.
“He’s small, he has to be crafty, his IQ of the game is very high, and he’s a tough load,” Rose said of Young. “So you have to stick him with all five, especially when they’re playing the way that they’re playing. … Everything is falling into place for Trae over there.”
On the game’s opening possession, Young manipulated the Knicks defense before finding Clint Capela for an alley-oop. On the ensuing Knicks possession, Randle clanked a baseline fading turnaround shot.
Those two plays were a microcosm of both the game and the series. Offense has come easy for a Hawks team loaded with weapons, and it’s come difficult for the Knicks, too heavily reliant on a high degree of difficulty shot from their best player.
“I think it’s a great group of guys, top to bottom, and as can be expected, there’s the disappointment of losing a playoff series,” the Knicks head coach said, “but also I think that they know that they’ve given everything that they have, and once you do that, that’s all you can do.”
Randle has improved, undoubtedly, but he hasn’t morphed into James Harden or Damian Lillard. His regular-season magic ran its course in the playoffs, where Randle shot 11-of-33 from downtown.
Young’s magic is just getting started, and while the Knicks go fishing, the Hawks prepare for a second-round showdown against the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Knicks overachieved this season and should hang their heads high for finishing with the No. 4 seed and making the playoffs for the first time since 2013.
“I think we’re bringing a brand of basketball back that the city can be proud of,” Randle said. “We have something to build on in the future.”
There is work that now must be done. That work starts with Randle and Barrett, who the Knicks’ immediate future hinges on if they’re going to retain their status as a playoff team.