Kristian Winfield: The real Knicks finally decided to stand up

Or maybe — just maybe — the Knicks have been the ...

ATLANTA — Maybe the Hawks booked their flights to Cancun a day in advance. Maybe they drank their own Kool-Aid and thought home-court advantage alone would be enough to force a sudden-death Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. Maybe the bright lights of a win-or-go-home playoff game proved too big of a moment for a young, inexperienced Hawks team.

Or maybe — just maybe — the Knicks have been the far superior team all along. Maybe the Knicks played with their food for the first three games of this series before deciding to barbecue the Hawks in Game 4. Maybe the real Knicks, at long last, finally decided to stand up.

And in standing up, they’ve unveiled a bona fide championship contender — the kind of team capable of running the table in the Eastern Conference and punching the franchise’s first ticket to the NBA Finals in 26 years. Your New York Knicks did that. They held the Hawks to 15 points in the first quarter alone and scored 20 points three times before the Hawks could do it once.