The Knicks have had a rough few weeks, having been forced to play without Jalen Brunson for the past two games except for Sunday’s early start in Cleveland, but now they’re facing an opponent also without their best player for the second straight game. We are competing against each other.
After a game in which the Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell was sidelined for an important win, the Knicks trailed by 22 points in the first half and got a similar victory as arch-rival Trae Young outed the Hawks, 116-100. I couldn’t do that. We lost at the Garden on Tuesday night.
“The margin for error is small considering all the players we have. We just give it everything we have,” Josh Hart said after the Knicks lost for the eighth time in 11 games. . “You can’t get off to a slow start like that and expend so much energy trying to get back into the game.…And he has a fourth [quarter]. I have to find a way. ”
Donte DiVincenzo scored 21 points for the Knicks, but made only 7 of 23 field goals and missed 12 of 17 3-pointers, leading them to fourth and fifth place in the Eastern Conference playoffs with Orlando. got in line. Entering Friday’s home game against the Magic.
The Knicks (36-26) shot 16-of-52 from beyond the arc overall, the most from long range in a game this season.
“That wasn’t the game plan. … But when you go back and look at it, you can see that the whole first half was good,” DiVincenzo said. “Everyone had an open look and didn’t get down. And when it started going down, everyone started getting confident and that’s when we started making those runs.”
Young missed the game against the Hawks after undergoing hand surgery last week, while Brunson was unable to play because of a bruised left knee he sustained early in Sunday’s game between the Knicks and Cavs.
Newly signed guard Shake Milton did not play for the Knicks, and Tom Thibodeau stuck to an eight-man rotation and relied heavily on Myles McBride, who played 47 and 45 minutes in the past two games without Brunson.
Jalen Johnson scored nine of his game-high 26 points in a 24-10 run to lead the Hawks (27-34), and DiVincenzo made just 1-of-9 from long range. The first quarter ended with the Knicks trailing by 33 points. -15 through 1.
“At the beginning of the game, I don’t think I hit any shots that were out of the ordinary for me,” DiVincenzo said. “Some fell into the toilet bowl, some were going in and out even though they felt good. But everyone told me to keep shooting.”
McBride came off the bench late in the first quarter, and Alec Burks (11 points) replaced him instead of newly signed Milton.
Burks scored five points, including one from long range, early in the second, but the Hawks extended their cushion to 22 points.
DiVincenzo’s second try brought the Knicks within 10 points with less than two minutes left in the first half, and three-pointers from McBride and Bojan Bogdanovic (19 points) led to a 13-2 victory and reinvigorated the home crowd. .
The Hawks led 61-50 at intermission, but the Knicks tightened up their defense in the third inning, with Hart’s first 3-pointer of the game and McBride’s right after drawing a charge from Bruno Fernando. A baseline dunk brought the lead to seven points. .
Hart then found Bogdanovic going for the and-1 hoop and drove all the way up and down the court, eventually establishing a 76-76 tie with 1:47 left.
However, Atlanta’s Bogdan Bogdanovic hit a 3-pointer from the left side with seconds remaining, completing the quarter with a 7-2 run and leading the Hawks 83-78 going into the final period.
The Knicks trailed by nine points early in the fourth inning, and Hart (14 points) hit consecutive 3-pointers with 6 minutes and 27 seconds left to cut the lead to four points, but they were up 21-9 the rest of the way.
“We got in a big hole, but by the fourth we were up by five points,” Thibodeau said. “We made some good shots and I thought a lot of our threes were wide open. We have to make them.”
