CJ McCollum may have wanted to frame the Atlanta Hawks’ opening-round series against the New York Knicks as a far tighter fight than the final scores suggest, but the numbers tell a more complicated story. Yes, the Hawks won two of the first three games and even left New York on the wrong end of a couple of tense finishes. But after falling behind 2-1, the Knicks did not merely recover — they took over, winning the next three games by 16, 29 and 51 points.
That is why McCollum’s line that the Hawks “pushed them to the limit” lands differently when measured against the rest of the series. The Knicks were tested early, and they had to survive real danger. They lost Game 2 after blowing an eight-point lead with less than five minutes to go, then dropped the next game after trailing by nine with less than eight minutes left and briefly taking the lead. Those are the kinds of defeats that can make a series feel closer than it ends up being.
A series that changed once New York settled in
The bigger story is what happened after those first three games. Once the Knicks adjusted, the margin of control became impossible to ignore. They not only won three straight, they did so with increasing force, culminating in a Game 6 blowout in which they led 83-36 at halftime and sat their starters for the final 14:45. That is not the profile of a series that stayed on a knife edge for long.
McCollum also said, “They figured something out,” which is the fairest way to describe New York’s response. The Knicks’ 16-3 playoff record tells the same story, and their 12-1 record when not playing Atlanta reinforces it: once the series moved beyond the Hawks’ early resistance, New York looked like a team with a far higher ceiling.
For the Hawks, the first three games created enough noise to support the idea that they belonged. For the Knicks, the final three games answered that noise with force. And for anyone trying to read the series honestly, that is the real conclusion: Atlanta made it awkward early, but New York finished it like a team that had solved the problem completely. The result is a reminder that a series can feel close in moments and still end in a mismatch.
That is also why Og Anunoby remains part of the larger conversation around New York’s direction. The Knicks’ ability to dominate once they settled in is exactly the kind of evidence that keeps trade and roster arguments alive, including the kind reflected in OG Anunoby Trade Idea Puts San Antonio Spurs News on New York Radar. When a team closes a series this decisively, the debate is no longer about whether it can compete — it is about how high the next level might be.
