Knicks left searching for answers after shocking Game 2 loss to Hawks
Late Monday night, when the questions stopped and the cameras turned off, Josh Hart remained in his seat at the podium for a few moments. He’d just answered a few questions about the Knicks’ brutal Game 2 loss . Normally, players get up and head home after their postgame interviews, but Hart stared straight ahead with a look of frustration and bewilderment that reflected the magnitude of what just happened on the court.
The No. 3 seeded Knicks -- a team with a mandate to reach the NBA Finals -- coughed up a winnable game at MSG. Questionable lineups, poor fourth-quarter offense and an inability to stop CJ McCollum left the Knicks searching for answers late Monday night.
They now head to Atlanta with their first-round series tied, 1-1. The odds tell you they’ll probably make it through this series and advance to play the Celtics in the second round, but by coughing up a double-digit fourth quarter lead on Monday, the Knicks made life much harder than it had to be. WHAT WENT WRONG?
Mike Brown sat both Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns at the same time for stretches in both halves on Monday. The Knicks were outscored by seven points when Brunson and Towns were off the floor. As Knicks Film School’s Ben Ritholtz pointed out, the Knicks’ net rating in the regular season when Towns and Brunson were off the floor wasn’t pretty.
Brown didn’t think that the lineups without Brunson and Towns led to the Knicks’ downfall. “I don’t think so. We’ve played that lineup quite a bit since the end of the season, that lineup’s been pretty good,” Brown said.