Trae Young Hit The Game-Winning Floater And Shushed The MSG Crowd

The Knicks and Hawks continued what has been a spectacular opening weekend of the NBA Playoffs with a tremendous, tense, back-and-forth affair that saw Atlanta swipe Game 1 on the road in a 107-105 win.

Trae Young starred for the Hawks with 32 points and 10 assists in his playoff debut, torching the Knicks consistently in the pick-and-roll game, and New York’s inability to keep him from getting downhill haunted them throughout the second half but particularly late in the fourth quarter. Young was able to get seemingly whatever he wanted and on the final possession of the game for Atlanta, they went to their bread and butter and got him to his floater where he buried it and had a message for the Madison Square Garden crowd.

The Knicks had a chance to tie or win with 0.9 seconds left, but ran a puzzling ATO that lobbed the ball into Julius Randle at the mid-post, who had a tough time catching it, turning, and shooting and was unable to even get a shot off before the buzzer.

For Young, it was an especially sweet moment as he silenced the crowd that opened the game with boisterous “F*ck Trae Young” chants.

Afterwards, Young reveled in the moment, saying he wanted to hear those chants again as he has fully embraced his villain role in this series.

For the Knicks, it’s a brutal loss as they got some tremendous contributions from their bench, namely Alec Burks who had 18 points in the fourth quarter, hitting big bucket after big bucket to keep New York in the game and give them a late lead.

However, Young and Bogdan Bogdanovic, who had 18 on the night and hit some big threes in key moments in Game 1, had the answer and the Knicks normal go-tos on offense weren’t able to find it in Game 1. Julius Randle had just 15 points on 6-of-23 shooting, as the team’s best player all year was unable to do much of anything in the playoff opener. RJ Barrett had the highlight of the game with his dunk on Bogdanovic, but he too was just 6-for-15 from the field for 15 points.

Burks’ 27 off the bench and Rose’s 17 kept New York afloat, but Atlanta did well to force the Knicks’ best players to take tough shots and they simply weren’t able to make enough. For Game 2 the adjustments will be very interesting, as New York has to figure out a new defensive gameplan for attacking Young in the pick-and-roll game — losing Nerlens Noel late certainly didn’t help matters — while Atlanta will look to find ways to open up the rest of their offense, which aside from Young attacking in PnR and Bogdanovic hitting shots on kickouts, struggled a bit.

It was the type of game we expected and there’s little reason to believe the rest of this series won’t be just as dramatic, and for at least night one, Young and Atlanta got the last laugh.