Game Recap: 2026 NBA Playoffs Round 1, Game 2 – NYK at ATL; L; ATL: 107, NYK: 106
Guess how many shots Karl-Anthony Towns attempted in the fourth quarter yesterday? Take a moment. Guess.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. For the second straight night, Towns attempted just two fourth-quarter shots. That’s right, two. Despite his 21 points and 17 rebounds in the game, he was silent when it mattered most, and the Knicks lost Game 3 to the Hawks, 109-108.
It was the first time in NBA history that any team lost consecutive playoff games by a single point. Now, the Knicks trail the Hawks 2-1 in the series. To think this first-round matchup was supposed to be a walk in the park… How could we have been so naïve?
I said this before the series started, and I’ll say it again: The Knicks should only focus on themselves. They shouldn’t worry about how many points CJ McCollum scores. They shouldn’t worry about Atlanta’s defensive schemes. But momentum is a funny thing, and the Hawks have sucked every ounce of it from the Knicks.
New York trailed by as many as 18 points in this game. Thanks to five first-quarter turnovers, they got to an incredibly awful start, trailing Atlanta by 12 points after 12 minutes. Their threes weren’t falling in the first half, but the Knicks kept attempting them anyway. The Hawks kept disrupting their offense, blocking out all entry points to the paint in the opening half.
The Knicks cut the deficit to eight points at halftime and fought back in the second half, thanks, in part, to changes in defensive matchups. Jalen Brunson was moved away from McCullum, who had scored over his head all night. Yes, the Knicks fought, but it wasn’t enough.
Miles McBride, the only competent bench player, nailed his fifth three-pointer to tie the game with 1:41 remaining in the final frame. Then, with 1:03 left, Brunson put the Knicks ahead with an and-one layup, but Atlanta responded with four straight points, including a go-ahead bucket by McCollum without Towns on the floor.
Head coach Mike Brown then called a timeout, returned Towns to the game, and the Knicks inbounded the ball. Captain Clutch had his chance for another signature playoff moment as Josh Hart inbounded the ball to Towns. He passed it back to Hart, who found Brunson on the right wing.
Brunson battled to the right post, but he couldn’t get a shot off. He tried passing the ball back to Hart, but the Hawks forced a turnover. Jonathan Kuminga covered the basketball at midcourt, ending the game.
“I wish I had a better answer for you,” Brunson said, head hung low, when asked about his team’s final possession. “I’ve got nothing right now. There are a lot of things I need to be better at. That’s a missed opportunity, for sure.”
Brown’s plan to get Brunson the ball late in the game was too predictable. It didn’t work in Game 2, when Mikal Bridges had to take the shot and missed an easy game-winning layup. If Brown refused to learn from his transgressions after Game 2, he should at least have adjusted when Brunson was getting swarmed by countless double teams in Game 3.
The key to this series, as with any one-two punch in basketball, is to get the ball to “Big Man” if Brunson can’t deliver. Brown had countless chances to increase Towns’s involvement in yesterday’s fourth quarter. Towns finished the game with a +22 rating, the best among Knicks starters. He played a key role in the third quarter as the Knicks attempted their comeback. Why couldn’t he do more in the fourth?
“It hurts more that we put ourselves in position to win, but we just didn’t close the show,” Towns said. “I think that’s why everyone is emotional. It’s tough, but we’ve got to keep our heads up. It’s okay to be disappointed. That means we care.”
If the result of Game 3, Brown’s poor coaching decisions, and Towns’s fourth quarter disappearance aren’t concerning enough, consider that Bridges, for whom the Knicks traded five first-round draft picks, couldn’t score a single point in the entire game. With a -26 rating, he shot 0-for-3 from the field with a team-high four turnovers.
“It was just a bad turnover day for me,” Bridges said. “I’ve just got to clean it up. It’s on me.”
Bridges hasn’t scored a point since the first half of Game 2. His worst moment was definitely his missed game-winning shot on Monday. Had he made that shot, I would not be writing about his struggles right now. At least, not to this extent.
“I’ve got to take it on the chin and handle it how I’m supposed to handle it and be ready for the next one,” said a disgruntled Bridges. “It’s going to suck. It is what it is. I’ve just got to be better to help my team out there.”
The Knicks gave up their entire future for Bridges, and it is unacceptable for him to be a ghost in this series. Bridges only played 4:51 in the second half, during which Atlanta outscored the Knicks by 11 points. Bridges’s confidence has been drained, and he doesn’t look like he belongs on an NBA court.
When asked if he would consider starting McBride in Game 4 instead of Bridges, Brown said, “I’m not even thinking about that right now, but in the same breath, I’ve said it before: We have to look at everything, but I’m thinking still about the game and what we could’ve done better and all that other stuff before we get into that.”
There is plenty the Knicks could have done better. Bridges could have at least been competent on the court, and Brown could have played him less often. At least, in the fourth quarter, he limited Bridges to 2:40; he was a -4 in that span. Regardless, at least Brown made that adjustment. He didn’t make the one that counted most, though: Getting the rock to Towns in the fourth quarter.
And then it got worse: “I’m not concerned about [Bridges],” Brown said. “Mikal’s a pro. He’s played in hundreds of basketball games, so he’ll be fine. But this is what the game called for, and this is what I went with.”
Hang on, Coach. The game “called” for you to continue playing a guard who couldn’t find the hoop? The game called for you to keep him on the floor for over 20 minutes, even though he was a defensive liability? Even though he accounted for nearly 30% of your team’s turnovers?
“We gave ourselves a chance, knowing that we didn’t play our best basketball,” Brown said. “So [this loss] should sting. We need to feel it and get ready to be locked in for the next game, which we will be.”
Brown’s sentiment feels awfully similar to his comments after Game 2, when I was confident the Knicks would bounce back in Game 3. Obviously, they didn’t.
Mitchell Robinson’s involvement was another issue Brown encountered. Before the series, Brown claimed he would never put Robinson and Towns on the court together.
At least this makes some sense. The Hawks don’t have many non-ball-handling players, and neither Towns nor Robinson can defend beyond the three-point line. However, if Brown wants to use Towns as a shooter over a center, which he has tried to do for most of this season, he needs Robinson’s help down low, at least sometimes.
“We need something from everybody, and the reality of what happened was we ended up going with KAT,” Brown said. “KAT played a significant amount of minutes for us because he was rolling in that second half.”
By not having Robinson on the court alongside Towns, there should have been opportunities for Towns to work along the post. This happened sometimes, but not in the fourth quarter. Hence, Towns’s lack of production in the final frame. So, if Brown wants to continue using Towns as a shooter, he should consider Robinson simultaneously.
That being said, Robinson is also responsible for his poor performance yesterday. He only scored a pair of points and was -18 on the court; only Bridges was worse. Additionally, despite nine rebounds and six assists, Hart shot 1-for-9 from the field. He played a major role in the Knicks’ comeback attempt by defending McCollum in the second half.
“I just tried to make it tough for him,” Hart said. “That was my biggest thing, just try to make it tough for him.”
It wasn’t enough, though. McCollum continued to villainize the Knicks. He scored 23 points and drained the game-winning shot with 12.7 seconds left in regulation, putting the Hawks ahead in this series. If you told me a week ago that the Knicks would be trailing Atlanta 2-1, I would not have believed you.
But here we are.
Game 4 is scheduled for Saturday, 4/25 at 6 PM (5 PM CDT) (NBC, Peacock).
