There was an NCAA tournament game in 2016 when Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges all were on the winning side of a historic blowout, a 44-point victory that is still the biggest in Final Four
history.
They went on to win that season's national championship at Villanova.
Fast forward a decade: Brunson, Hart and Bridges were all on the winning side of another historic postseason blowout Thursday night, this one coming when the New York Knicks beat the Atlanta Hawks by 51 points to advance to the Eastern Conference semifinals. The lead was an NBA-playoff-record 47 at the half, and New York eventually led by 61.
Time will tell if another championship awaits.
“I think it shows the kind of team we are — what we can be,” Hart said.
Next up for the Knicks is an Eastern Conference semifinal matchup against either Boston or Philadelphia. Game 1 is Monday night; if the Celtics are the Knicks' opponent the series will begin in Boston, otherwise it'll begin in New York.
A week or so ago, the Knicks trailed the Hawks 2-1 in the series after back-to-back one-point losses and looked very much like a team on the brink of trouble. New York went 3-0 from there by a combined 96 points — the second-most-lopsided three-game stretch in NBA playoff history.
“Feel good about tonight and tomorrow we turn the page," Brunson said Thursday night after the rout was complete in Atlanta. "It’s good to celebrate the wins, but we can’t let this drag on. We got to refocus up. So, we wake up tomorrow, it’s on to the next.”
That's exactly what Brunson, Bridges and Hart had to do in that 2016 NCAA title run. (Poor Buddy Hield; he was on the losing side of that 95-51 Villanova win over Oklahoma in the Final Four, and on the losing side of this series as well.)
It won't guarantee anything, of course. New York is in the second round for the fourth consecutive season — the Knicks haven't enjoyed a run like this since a nine-season stretch from 1992 through 2000 — but there's still a ton of work left to do.
When this series against Atlanta ended, Knicks coach Mike Brown thanked tons of people — all his staffers, coaches, players and more. He also thanked someone who Knicks fans probably weren't thinking of.
“Quin Snyder,” Brown said.
That's right — the Atlanta coach.
Snyder forced Brown's hand in this series, and when Atlanta went up 2-1 the Knicks went back to the drawing board in multiple ways — namely how they played offense. Brown prefers something more free-flowing, where players could react instinctively based on what's happening within an action. Snyder and the Hawks took that away for the first three games.
In the second three games, New York shot 55% and averaged 126.7 points. The adjustments worked.
“They forced us to put our thinking caps on, and they forced us play different, find ways to make the game easier for our players, putting them in their strengths while trying not to hinder them," Brown said. “We've changed what we’ve done offensively, but again, it was because we were pushed to do it. And we feel pretty good about it.”
Game 7 between the Celtics and 76ers is Saturday. The East No. 1 seed is Detroit, and Orlando has them in trouble in Round 1. The East No. 2 seed is Boston, which now faces a Game 7 just to get out of Round 1.
The third-seeded Knicks? They're not sweating anything for the next few days.
“The fans didn’t know what version they would see of us, especially during this series. We didn’t play our best basketball,” the Knicks' Karl-Anthony Towns said. “For us to make a statement about who we could be when we’re clicking on all cylinders, it’s great for us to have this kind of tape so we could look back at it and see when we’re playing our best, what are we doing correctly.”
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