ATLANTA — The Hawks are right where they expected to be, but they got there in a way they never expected. On Thursday night, Atlanta beat the Knicks 109-108 and took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
C.J. McCollum finished with 23 points and hit the go-ahead basket with 12.7 seconds left, the kind of late shot that can tilt a playoff series. Jonathan Kuminga added 21 points in Game 3, and McCollum has averaged 27 points through the first three games while taking a team-high 61 shots.
That production matters because the Hawks’ top two scorers in the series, Jalen Johnson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, both struggled. Johnson entered this stretch as a freshly minted All-Star, while Alexander-Walker could be in line for the league’s Most Improved Player award on Friday. Atlanta won anyway, which says as much about the rest of the rotation as it does about the matchup.
The Hawks have spent much of the season searching for the right version of themselves. Less than a year ago, the plan was to build around Trae Young and Kristaps Porziņģis as a perfect inside-outside pairing. It never happened. Young played only 10 games before being traded to Washington, and Porziņģis lasted 17 games before Atlanta sent him to Golden State.
McCollum and Kuminga are the returns from those midseason moves, and McCollum’s role changed again on Feb. 22 when coach Quin Snyder moved him from the bench into the starting lineup. The fit clicked. In 30 regular-season games together, the Hawks’ starting group posted a plus-20.3 net rating, which is why Atlanta kept leaning on that group once the playoffs began.
That is the part that made Thursday feel bigger than one possession. McCollum, acquired from Washington in January, has become the player the Hawks trust when the game narrows. Kuminga has played about 30 minutes per game in the series, giving Atlanta another scoring option as the Knicks try to chase the lead back home. The original blueprint vanished months ago. What replaced it is now one win from a stranglehold on the series.
