Steve Popper: Knicks approaching Game 4 like their season depends on it
Knicks' Deuce McBride reacts against the Atlanta Hawks during the third quarter of Game 3 of an Eastern Conference first-round playoff game on Thursday in Atlanta, Ga. Credit: Getty Images/Kevin C. Cox
ATLANTA — The panic is supposed to be reserved for fans, for talking heads on television, talk radio and right here on these pages. But Friday, as the Knicks looked back on what had transpired so far in this opening-round playoff series, it was clear that if you’re feeling the pressure, they are right there with you.
The starting lineup?
“A game-time decision,” Mike Brown said.
New rotations?
“Everything is on the table,” Brown said.
The approach to Saturday night’s Game 4 at State Farm Arena?
“I would say,” Deuce McBride said, “We’re playing for our lives.”
So, yes, they are feeling a lot like you. And with good reason. After starting the series with a convincing win at home, the Knicks gave away Game 2 at Madison Square Garden, seeing a 12-point fourth quarter lead disappear, and that was followed by Thursday night’s Game 3 loss, a game which was alternating between one of the worst performances of the season, a benching of a player supposed to be a key contributor, a comeback and a collapse in the clutch.
Where there is plenty to nitpick and second-guess, one thing that Brown has not been hesitant to do is shift lineups and rotations and Thursday, with MSG chairman James Dolan, who is tasked with paying the $150-million contract the Knicks handed Mikal Bridges, Brown put him on the bench for nearly the entire second half. It worked much better than the 20 minutes and 32 seconds that Bridges was on the floor and was 0-for-3 with four turnovers and a -26.
Deuce McBride played 31 minutes and gave the Knicks much more, just as he did in the first game when he hit a pair of three-pointers to key a run that built a huge lead (that the starters nearly saw disappear). So it’s worth asking, against an Atlanta team that has given the Knicks fits with their length and physicality, could Brown make that switch he did in the second half to start Game 4?
“That’ll be a game-time decision,” Brown said. “Like I said (Thursday) night, at this point in the year, everything is on the table. What we do offensively, what we do defensively, what our rotations are, who starts, what we come out with. Everything is on the table.”
Just that this could even come up and not met with an immediate denial tells you where the Knicks are right now, facing a two-games-to-one deficit in the best-of-seven series with the Hawks suddenly feeling very confident and full of themselves.
“I would say we’re playing for our lives,” McBride said. “I mean, it is a seven-game series and it’s the first to four, but it’s ticking away. We don’t want to leave it up to chance. We don’t want to say we wish we could have or we wish we would have done this different. We want to take every opportunity, every chance we can, and take advantage of it, be together as a team and figure it out.”
The Knicks have rarely had to figure this out before. The answer was always a simple one: do your job and let Jalen Brunson carry the team on his shoulders. But the Hawks and coach Quin Snyder have come into this series with the intention of making life hard on Brunson and they have in ways that no other opponent has managed to since Brunson arrived in New York.
Karl-Anthony Towns has been more efficient and that makes sense because the Hawks don’t have the size to counter his size, strength and skill, but they do have an assortment of long and athletic guards and wings to try to slow down Brunson, and they are intent to throw whatever they can at him and make someone else beat them — like they did on the final play of Thursday’s 109-108 loss when Onyeka Okongwu and Jonathan Kuminga chased Brunson and enveloped him, making his last-ditch pass attempt nearly impossible and it rolled away as time expired.
The Knicks might be able to absorb Brunson’s struggles if Bridges was performing the way he was expected to or Josh Hart, who has been the best defender for the Knicks in the series, didn’t shoot 1-for-9 Thursday, or Landry Shamet suddenly wilted and Mitchell Robinson has been erratic. And maybe none of it matters if it didn’t seem like the Hawks were just playing harder than them.
So panic? Yes, do it.
“The reality of it is, come playoff time we should be feeling that all the time,” Brown said. “There should be a sense of urgency every single possession you’re on the floor. And it doesn’t matter who’s in front of you or what the score is.
“You have to play with the level of sense of urgency/desperation, however you want to call it, throughout the course of a ball game, even if you’re up 3-0. I’ve been up 3-0 and when you’re up 3-0 on somebody they’re playing with a level of desperation similar to them being a wounded animal that makes it difficult to close out. So that’s definitely something that we want our guys to feel, is that sense of urgency so that it can be translated to every single possession on the floor when we’re playing in the game.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
