ATLANTA — State Farm Arena must have run out of chicken. The only menu item was barbecued hawk.
The Knicks put the Hawks on an open fire on Saturday, jumping out to a 25-point halftime lead in a 121-105 victory for win No. 49 of the season. They will have an opportunity to secure win No. 50 for the second season in a row in the second leg of a back-to-back against the Phoenix Suns on Sunday — a game Jalen Brunson is expected to make his return after missing a month of action due to a sprained right ankle.
The Knicks scored 78 points in the first half: 38 in the opening period, followed by a monster 40-22 advantage in the second quarter. Their 78 points at the half marked the second-most New York has scored in any half this season, trailing only the 83-point second half against the Memphis Grizzlies on Jan. 27.
“I think we were just focused, locked-in, obviously we knew we had to bring it with an early start to the game,” forward Josh Hart added.
The Knicks also made 13 of their first 18 threes and finished the game 15-of-29 from downtown. It was their fourth-most efficient three-point shooting performance of the season.
Not bad for a team still missing its captain, its sixth man (Miles McBride – groin) and its defensive anchor (Mitchell Robinson – left ankle injury management), though the Hawks were without key pieces Jalen Johnson, Clint Cappella, Kobe Bufkin and Larry Nance Jr.
“We have a lot of great shooting,” said OG Anunoby. “Landry [Shamet] can really shoot. Delon [Wright] can shoot. Cam [Payne] can shoot. KAT [Karl-Anthony Towns]. Everyone. Josh. So we have a great team of shooters and everyone is shooting with confidence and it’s contagious.”
The Knicks didn’t need to take a trip to Magic City to find some wings. Instead they brought their own — and they were hot.
Anunoby and Mikal Bridges combined for 32 first-half points and 44 on the night to help the Knicks build a 34-point lead out of halftime. Karl-Anthony Towns scored a game-high 30 points to go with 11 rebounds on 10-of-15 shooting from the field.
The Knicks strong defense continued on Saturday, holding all Hawks other than Trae Young (16 points, 5-of-15 shooting from the field) to 14 points or less.
“[We were] just tied together. I thought a good aggressiveness on the ball and then good help, great effort, second and third effort,” said head coach Tom Thibodeau. “When you’re defending Trae Young it requires you to do more than one thing. You’ve got to fly around and I thought we did that. And then I thought the rebounding was good and then you’re concerned about them because they’re so disruptive defensively.”
Hart said the game plan was to get the ball out of the Hawks All-Star’s hands.
“Obviously he’s a hell of a player. We were just trying to make it difficult for him, get him off the ball, and have other guys do the playmaking and getting shots up,” said Hart. “KAT did a good job in the blitz. Kal’s [Bridges] been doing a great job on him all year, so that was kind of the game plan and we executed it.”
Caris LeVert, Georges Niang and Terence Mann combined for 41 points on 17-of-35 shooting from the field, but Atlanta’s starters mustered just 52 points compared to 100 for the Knicks’ starting five.
“Yeah, we were concerned about LeVert and Niang off the bench,” said Thibodeau. “If you don’t pay attention they can do a lot of damage. That team is an outstanding offensive team. If you let your guard down at all, they can get 10 in a minute easy.”
Hart fell one rebound shy of his 10th triple double of the season with 16 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists and four steals, and Delon Wright finished with 10 points in 29 minutes starting for the injured Brunson. Cameron Payne returned to the lineup after missing six games with an ankle sprain and finished with three points and five assists, and Landry Shamet posted his fifth double-digit scoring performance in his last seven games with 12 points off the bench.
Despite the blowout, Anunoby, Hart, Bridges and Towns each logged 33 or more minutes, with Thibodeau subbing Anunoby in for Bridges with under five minutes left in the fourth quarter.
The No. 3 Knicks improved to 3.5 games ahead of the fourth-seeded Indiana Pacers, who face MVP candidate Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets on Sunday.
A Knicks win against the Suns plus a Pacers loss to the Nuggets all but seals New York’s playoff standing as the Eastern Conference’s third seed, and two more wins will cement the standing.
“We try to win every game we play. Not just two,” said Towns. “We got to do a good job of staying focused and finishing out the season strong.”