NEW YORK — A rare smattering of boos rained down from the Madison Square Garden crowd.
The Knicks faithful can be merciless like that sometimes. Their team, after all, is in sole possession of the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed. They had 23 wins to just 10 losses entering Friday’s matchup against the Atlanta Hawks. They’d made it to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in a quarter century, hired a head coach who radically changed the way the Knicks function on both ends of the floor, then proceeded to win the NBA Cup, a clear barometer of this team’s ceiling as championship contenders.
On Friday, the first game of the new calendar year, that all went out the window.
That’s how ugly of a performance the Knicks—with both Karl-Anthony Towns (illness) and Mitchell Robinson (load management) sidelined — put on in their 110-99 loss at home on Friday, their second in a row following Wednesday’s loss in San Antonio to the Spurs.
Knicks fans booed their valiant team when the Hawks’ lead ballooned to 29 points midway through the third quarter. They booed again at the top of the fourth quarter.
And then something happened, a short-lived Knicks run that cut Atlanta’s 24-point fourth-quarter lead down to just 13 in three minutes of game play. The Knicks went on to cut Atlanta’s lead down to nine with under 90 seconds left in regulation.
Those two late pushes weren’t nearly enough to compensate for a lackadaisical opening three quarters. The Knicks lost the middle two periods, 61-40, and fell to a Hawks team without All-Star point guard Trae Young.
Jalen Brunson finished with 24 points on 10-of-24 shooting from the field and a miserable 1-of-10 shooting from downtown. OG Anunoby added 19 points and 10 rebounds, Mikal Bridges posted 17 points, five rebounds and five assists, and Ariel Hukporti — starting for Towns — made his best Robinson impression with 17 rebounds (seven on the offensive glass), four blocks, four assists and eight points in 28 minutes of play.
The Knicks got just 19 points from their bench to 24 from the Hawks: Jordan Clarkson and Tyler Kolek split 11 points, and Guerschon Yabusele scored eight point sin 15 minutes off the bench.
Meanwhile, Kristaps Porzingis returned to MSG for the first time as a Hawk since the trade that send him to Atlanta from Boston during the summer. On a minutes restriction, merely two games removed from nursing an extended illness absence, the former Knicks first-round pick finished with four points and eight rebounds on one-of-eight shooting from the field in 17 minutes of play.
“The reality of it is it’s a long season. And everybody is human, just like you are with your job, our guys are human just like you are with your job,” head coach Mike Brown said ahead of tipoff on Friday. “It’s my job to try to push our guys to be perfect. I know it’s not going to happen, but I’m going to try as best I can to push them that way.
“It’s human nature when you have success you tend to let down a little bit, especially when you’re playing or competing against the best in the world. It’s human nature to let go of the rope from time to time, especially if you’re still finding ways to have success. And then when you do have success, I’ve experienced this on a lot of other teams I’ve been with, people come for your neck and they’re coming for your neck for 48 minutes. If you give them a glimpse of hope they’re going to take advantage of it because they are professionals, they are the best out there. And that’s happened to us a couple of times, as well.”
Brown’s words rang true on Friday, and the Knicks have a chance to right the ship on Saturday, though it’ll be the second leg of a back-to-back with Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid, rookie VJ Edgecombe and the Philadelphia 76ers coming to town.