After three straight playoff appearances in which the team racked up four series victories, including a run to the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals, New York Knicks fans have raised their standards higher than ever before.
The 2026 playoffs are Finals-or-bust for New York fans.
It’s why Knicks fans expect the team not just to defeat the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, but to do so effortlessly.
For that reason, it only took one grotesque quarter for Knicks fans to fall from their highest level of championship optimism in the 21st century to a pit of despair.
Fire Mike Brown!
Trade Jalen Brunson!
Trade for Giannis!
All because of one bad quarter that led to a one-point loss in a playoff series that is now tied at 1-1 and still has New York as -174 favorites (implied 63.5% chance to win).
Let’s be clear: This is not to say that New York’s Game 2 loss to the Hawks was anything but a colossal embarrassment. It was one of the worst playoff losses in franchise history.
It is also fair for Knicks fans to think that the team should have better than 63.5% odds to win a series against a team led by a 34-year-old C.J. McCollum after two games at Madison Square Garden.
But Tuesday night’s action around the NBA reminded Knicks fans of a fact that should have been embedded in their minds after last year’s first round: The quality of a playoff series victory does not really matter.
The Boston Celtics were blown out at home by the Philadelphia 76ers, 111-97, bringing that series to a tie as it heads back to Philly.
Without Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs blew a 12-point home lead to the 42-win Portland Trail Blazers to knot the series up.
The Denver Nuggets blew a 19-point home lead to the Minnesota Timberwolves as they allowed the series to reach 1-1.
Previously, the East’s No. 1-seeded Detroit Pistons lost their Game 1 at home to the Orlando Magic.
Misery loves company, and the Knicks are at a crowded function. They are far from the only favored team to drop a surprising first-round game at home.
But how many of those losses will matter in the end?
Most likely, all of these favored teams will still win their respective series. Perhaps there will be one upset in there, but even with one disappointing home loss in the opening two-game set, the favored teams remain in control as long as they take one home game.
Knicks fans witnessed this last year. After defeating the Detroit Pistons in Game 1, the Knicks dropped Game 2 in ugly fashion, putting fans in a tizzy because New York was expected to steamroll the upstart Pistons.
The Knicks ultimately won the series in six games thanks to their 3-0 record in Detroit. It was anything but pretty, though. New York outscored Detroit by just 8 points across a six-game series. That was a disappointing result for the heavily favored Knicks as they aimed to build momentum going into a second-round series against the defending champion Celtics.
Based on the logic that New York didn’t beat Detroit thoroughly enough, the Knicks shouldn’t have stood a chance against the 61-win champs. If they could only outscore the Pistons by 1.3 points per game, surely, you would have to subtract 10 points against Boston, right?
As we all know, that is not what transpired. The Knicks flipped a switch against Boston, whom they seemed to match up against better than Detroit, despite Boston being the far more talented team at the time. New York took down Boston in six games.
From there, the Knicks were expected to cruise to the NBA Finals. After making surprisingly short work of the Celtics, they would breeze by the 50-win Pacers with homecourt advantage, right?
Of course, the basketball gods had other plans. New York fell in six games, often looking overwhelmed in their matchup against a faster-paced Indiana team.
What is the moral of the story?
Knicks fans shouldn’t read too much into the quality of the team’s performance in the playoffs. Whether the team finishes off Atlanta in 7 games or 5, the goal is to survive and advance, period.
How “easily” a team wins a series has no bearing on how well they will perform in the next series. It will be a completely different matchup, and a completely different set of games in which the team could either catch fire or go cold.
New York and Atlanta are tied at 1-1. No, it is not the result that any Knicks fan wanted coming into the series, nor after the team led by 12 in the fourth quarter of Game 2.
But the Knicks are not the only team to suffer a loss like that in these playoffs. In fact, their Game 2 loss may have been the least concerning of all. Despite missing 10 free throws and 23 threes, the Knicks still only lost by a single point.
The Knicks are clearly a more talented team than the Hawks, and they retain a strong chance of defeating Atlanta in this upcoming five-game series, even with three of those games being in Georgia. Things are a little tighter than they should be, but if the Knicks stay the course, they should be fine.
Tuesday reminded New York fans that it isn’t abnormal for a favored team to drop a playoff game here or there, especially one that it feels like they should absolutely win. It happens to the best of them.
Of course, if the Knicks ultimately lose the series, we can look back on Game 2 and talk about how crushing of a meltdown it was.
That is unlikely to happen, though. The Knicks are still significantly favored to win, as they should be.
And if they do finish off the series win, what Knicks fans must refrain from doing is reading into the quality of it.
Now that the Hawks stole Game 2 on the road, there is a decent chance they will win at least one more game in their own house, meaning this series could go 6 or 7 games even if New York ultimately prevails. That would be a disappointing result for Knicks fans, many of whom expected the series to be over in 4 or 5 games.
It doesn’t matter.
Survive and advance.
Every playoff series is different. This is no longer the regular season. Through 82 games, the NBA trains us to thoroughly study trends and tendencies in hopes of maximizing our chances of accurately projecting what will happen next.
The playoffs aren’t like that. All you have to do now is stay alive, no matter how ugly it is.
The Hawks still need to beat the Knicks three more times. If Knicks fans are afraid that will happen after a mere one-point loss in which just about everything went wrong for New York, then they never had confidence in the team being a title contender in the first place.
Everything is still right in front of the Knicks—as long as fans understand that a potential 6 or 7-game series win over the Hawks is not a death sentence to the team’s viability as a championship contender.
