Kristian Winfield: The real Knicks finally decided to stand up

TL;DR

The Knicks dominated the Hawks in Game 4, showcasing their potential as a championship contender. They held the Hawks to just 15 points in the first quarter and led by 50 points at halftime.

Key points

Knicks dominated Hawks in Game 4
Held Hawks to 15 points in the first quarter
Led by 50 points at halftime
Showcased potential as a championship contender
Forced 12 turnovers in early game play

KnicksHawks

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. They forced more turnovers (12) through the first quarter-and-a-half of play than they gave up made field goals (seven). They broke the game wide-open with the kind of 39-4 run you barely see in video games and were up by 50 — yes, 50 — on the Hawks before the halftime break.

The Knicks built a lead as large as 61 points. They flat-out embarrassed the Hawks at home — or was it home? Because yet again, the Knicks turned State Farm Arena into MSG South, the only thing Hawks fans cheered in the first half being rapper Yung Joc’s performance of his hit song “It’s Going Down” in the middle of a second-quarter timeout.

Only two things went down on Thursday: The Hawks and a scrap between Mitchell Robinson and Dyson Daniels, resulting in both being ejected with looming potential ramifications for Robinson should the league decide to suspend him the first game of the Knicks’ second-round playoff series.

The Knicks, and their fans, can thank the basketball gods for this mid-series evolution into an Eastern Conference juggernaut — because had they drawn the Toronto Raptors in the first round and not the Hawks, the Knicks wouldn’t have faced the early adversity forcing them to change play styles on the fly.

Had the Hawks played their starters and beaten the Miami Heat in their season finale, the Knicks would have cruised to a first-round victory over a team they’ve beaten 14 times in a row. They would have had to do this soul searching in Round 2, with far less room for error.