Knicks set to face resurgent Hawks in 1st round clash

So here we go. The 3rd-seeded New York Knicks are set to face the Atlanta Hawks – the 6th seed – in the first round of the playoffs. And yeah, before you say anything, I know. We’ve been here before. And it did not go well.

Cast your mind back to 2021. The Knicks went in as the 4th seed, full of hope, Julius Randle fresh off an All-Star campaign, RJ Barrett showing flashes of something real. The Hawks came in as the 5, and nobody – nobody – seriously thought Atlanta was walking out of the Garden with a series win. Then Trae Young happened. The man skipped into Madison Square Garden and turned it into his personal stage, hitting a floater at the buzzer in Game 1 to steal the opener on enemy turf. MSG went silent. New York never truly recovered. The Hawks took the series in 5, and Trae left New York with a villain’s smirk that still haunts the Garden faithful.

But here’s the thing – that was a completely different world.

The cast of characters from that 2021 series? Gone. Almost entirely. Randle is gone. Barrett is gone. On the Atlanta side, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Clint Capela are history. And Trae Young himself? We’ll get to that in a second. Those names belong to a different chapter for both franchises. This is not that series.

The Knicks we see today were rebuilt around one man: Jalen Brunson. Ever since he arrived in New York, the Knicks stopped being a punchline and started being a problem. Add Karl-Anthony Towns into that mix, and suddenly you’ve got a team that doesn’t just belong in the playoffs – they’re making noise deep into them. These Knicks are legitimate contenders, and if you need a reference point, just remember that last season they were two wins away from the NBA Finals. Two wins. That’s not a fluke. That’s a franchise that has genuinely transformed itself, something New York hasn’t been able to say with a straight face since Patrick Ewing was running the show.

Atlanta’s road here, though? Far messier. After that 2021 Eastern Conference Finals run, the Hawks basically fell apart. Three playoff wins in the years that followed. Zero postseason appearances in the last two seasons. For a team that seemed poised to be an Eastern power, it was a quiet, painful collapse. But then – and this is where it gets genuinely interesting – Atlanta did something smart. A series of smart moves, actually.

January 9th: they pulled the trigger on a trade that nobody saw coming. Trae Young – the villain, the guy who broke New York’s heart – was shipped to Washington in exchange for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert. Let that sink in. Atlanta moved on from the guy who defined them for half a decade. Then came the February 5th trade deadline, and the Hawks were busy. They pulled Jock Landale in from Utah in a three-way deal, and snagged Gabe Vincent from the Lakers for Luke Kennard. And if that wasn’t enough, they flipped Kristaps Porzingis to Golden State and brought back Jonathan Kuminga and Buddy Hield. Three significant roster moves in the span of a month.

The results were almost immediate. On February 4th, Atlanta sat at 25-27 – an under-.500 team drifting toward lottery territory. From that point on? They went 21-9 down the stretch, including an extraordinary 11-game winning streak. Nineteen wins in their last 24 games. That’s not a hot streak, that’s a transformation.

And the two teams already had a chance to preview what’s coming. They met last week down in Atlanta – and it was exactly as tense as you’d imagine. The Knicks edged it out 108-105, but calling it comfortable would be a lie. Atlanta pushed them to the wire, and in the final seconds, CJ McCollum launched a desperate heave from beyond halfcourt with time expiring. The ball hit the tips of his fingers as the buzzer sounded — and that tiny, fractional contact was just enough to invalidate the basket. The Knicks exhaled. Had that gone in, we’d be talking about a very different momentum story heading into the series.

So where does that leave us?

The Hawks are real. They’re hot, they’re hungry, and they’ve got nothing to lose going into the Garden as a 6-seed. McCollum gives them a real playmaker who doesn’t need the ball in his hands every possession like Trae did. Kuminga adds athleticism. The team is built differently – more balanced, less personality-dependent. They’re not some warmup act.

But the Knicks in the playoffs are a different animal. They’ve been through the fire. They know what it takes. Brunson has shown time and again that he elevates when the lights get brightest, and a Madison Square Garden crowd in postseason mode is one of the most intimidating forces in professional sports.

Atlanta’s got a great story going. But stories don’t always have the ending you want.

Verdict – Knicks in 6