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2026 NBA Playoffs Round 1: Knicks @ Hawks Game 6 – It’s Closing Time

The Hawks don’t have to go home, but after tonight, they can’t stay here, as it is closing time for the Atlanta Hawks.

After two annoying losses, the series turned in Game 4, as these last two games have been the ideal of how I assumed this series would go. The Hawks have been feisty, and maybe with a lottery pick and some further growth from some of their players, they’ll be a formidable team next season, but this is THIS season.

THIS season, the Knicks are clearly showing that the Eastern Conference is going to go through THEM. None of the other contenders are dominating the way the Knicks are dominating the Hawks. So let’s get this shit done! Josh Hart is ready to play, and I imagine the rest of the team is, too!

The Knicks just have to finish this series and go on to the second round, where they’ll hopefully host the Sixers in Game 1, as every new beginning is some other beginning’s end!

Let’s go, Knicks!

198 replies on “2026 NBA Playoffs Round 1: Knicks @ Hawks Game 6 – It’s Closing Time”

$42 to get in to a Game 6 in Atlanta tonight

You can get maybe a couple of hot dogs at MSG for that?

1

gonna be really hard to shut the same team down in the playoffs 3 games in a row…

less than confident for tonight’s game…

Hart’s bad back is going to make him shoot well from deep for the first time this series.

Guys, we have already won this game. Pagliacci has predicted it so. It is written.

I would be so owned if OG decided to be prime Kawhi Leonard for this playoff run

Bridges running off ball sets with Towns for easy lay ups? Did I accidentally take shrooms?

I don’t have cable so I literally can’t watch this without signing up for a 4th streaming plan. Please get me out of this bullshit dystopian hellscape!

1

jalen starting to hug the ball a bunch…

it does kind of eat up the clock a bunch…throws everyone’s offense off though…

1

Atlanta does not look ready for the limelight.

It’s also amazing how much having a single nonentity on offense like Dyson makes it impossible to run a proper offensive set. Couldn’t be the Knicks though

Nikarl-Anthony Townsic with 4 assists in under 9 minutes so far…

OG powering to the basket and finishing!

Pinch me. On second thought, don’t pinch me. Let me believe this is really happening.

For all Brown’s weird rotations, he came through getting KAT to run the Sacramento sets

Would really hate to be a hawks bettor right now

Mikal has more points this quarter than he has the rest of the series (don’t check the stats, just trust me)

I would be so owned if OG decided to be prime Kawhi Leonard for this playoff run

He’s been possessed since he missed those free throws.

He’s outscoring the Hawks 18-15!!!

I’ll give State Farm Arena this, it’s certainly not quiet in the face of a Knicks beat down 😉

If OG was a horse I would insist on testing him for PEDs.

I would just give some of his PEDs to Bridges

1

Tickets are much cheaper down there such that you might see some pre-halftime emptying

I think this game was 15-9 when I went to get the kids ready for bed. My goodness.

The Hawks are dead mean walking right now. No confidence and the Knicks are deflecting so much.
KAT need to chill.

Mikal free throws the hawks are not winning this game lmao

Atlanta had one foot already on the beach so it’s a bit misleading but no way the Knicks are really 22-1 to go the distance.

Bridges is playing so well I was officially worried when he was down, whereas a few games ago…

Cracking the first of many beers in honor of the hawks season

Dirty elbow by Daniels on Mitch. Punk shit

I don’t care if there’s a technical or even double technical, but there should be no suspension.

That was dirty as hell by Daniels for sure, hope the ejection precludes a suspension. Not like it’s the worst thing in the world for Mitch to sit the rest of this one out anyway.

No suspension there.
Mitch can get some rest before we take on Boston or Philly, all good.

Refs let Daniels get away with instigating. Given the score, giving Mitch the rest of game off not bad. Its going to get real chippy

Well shit, that’s definitely a suspension for Mitch

I would be surprised. I think that was just a cautionary double ejection.

Watching Mitch just mow people down was interesting tho.
He showed great restraint not once raising a fist in anger

2

Daniels not only threw the elbow, he also tried to dislocate Mitch’s shoulder. So there were two cheap shots there.

5

I get that this score is “shocking”, but it’s not like the Knicks didn’t dominate this team in Games 1, 4 and 5 and had a big lead in Game 2. They’re substantially better than this Hawks team.

1

I am not young, I have watched hundreds and hundreds of playoff games over the decades, and I can’t recall having witnessed such a demolition right off the bat before. The Knicks were excellent but they say you play as well as your opponent allows you, and the Hawks in this first half did their best to facilitate. An elimination game turned into a humiliation game for them and more. I was initially going to say it’s on their coaching staff, but this is way beyond that at this point. That altercation was a good thing for them to wake up a bit.

1

OG has been much better on the boards this series. Huge plus if he sustains it.

Seriously Kolek-Jose-McCullar-Sochan-Hukporti from here on out

That’s good because Diawara would get maxed if he played this game

Side note: 2-ways aren’t eligible for the playoffs

Back in the bad old days I can remember being on the losing side of games like this. It’s really nice to be on the other side and even better in the playoffs. The entire second half is going to be garbage time.

honestly, any other team but the new york knicks involved in this spectacle and i am doing something else…

I am thoroughly enjoying this competitive sports entertainment activity…

more please…

I’m not watching the game because I’m in too much pain to sit up and watch on my laptop since I don’t have cable or that stupid new ESPN subscription..but I’m following the box score and can see some highlights. And…

…I WAS a Dyson Daniels fan until tonight. That was some bitch shit straight up. He only proved my point after the 2nd game when I said how over-matched the Hawks looked by how they kept literally hitting our guys all over the place. You do shit like what Daniels did when your bitch ass team is a bitch ass team. Sorry for the extra cursing lol…but that pissed me off almost as much as Embiid pulling Mitch out of the air. PEOPLE BETTER STOP PLAYIN WITH MITCH!! He’s definitely livin rent free in the Hawks’ heads

OG with perhaps the greatest half of playoff basketball in Knicks history ( don’t know Clyde’s half stats from his epic game 7 in chip game). Mikal showed out as well.

We need to take out Brunson to keep him at 12 shots and thus finally allow Strat to think he had a good game

4

Just learned the Knicks started off in the Basketball Association of America, 1946…

they have been .500 or better in 39 of 79 completed seasons…17 seasons with 50 wins…

we are not an elite professional basketball franchise…

that’s okay though, cuz: location location location 🏀

What is this?? I guess i must fall asleep in the first half of all games from now on, and only wake up during the 3rd. 😀

KAT triple double

Lol, that’s 2 in this series vs 4 in rest of his career. He could absolutely beat that over this playoffs the way he’s been playing

1

Maybe Atlanta should’ve tried to win their final regular season game to finish with the 5th seed…

2

This feels like Knicks in 4, and they only lost those 2 for the many of us that predicted Knicks in 6 to be right. 😀

boston doesn’t have an embiid…or really any notable centers…

it would be something to see though, in his prime KAT versus a fairly healthy embiid…

that would be something to see…

This first round couldn’t have been better for the Knicks. Found an identity, got everyone that was struggling on a roll. Incredible stuff.

2

Bridges with 24 pts on 10/12 shooting, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and great defense.

He’s ready for the Jays 😉

1

Knicks title odds gonna look very different tomorrow. Grab those +2200’s anywhere you can find them.

Clyde showing a national audience what they’ve been missing all these years 💙 🧡

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Wise words from our fan favorite, the one and only Walt “Clyde” Frazier. 🧡💙

2

Well, the witch we visited for this is super powerful, even Dadiet is making 3Ps

Asking people to “GET LOUD” when losing by 50 is risky… they might decide to boo the team! 😀

Clyde made a compelling case to want the Celtics instead of the Sixers.

And he didn’t even mention Maxey, right? We have a problem with Maxey’s speed.

Sixers had a chance to end the game in the last couple of minutes, but missed every shot.

Sixers had a chance to end the game in the last couple of minutes, but missed every shot.

They are doing it now, as the Celtics miss every shot from deep.

They’re gonna reverse Drummond’s last second trey, but Philly still up by 19 after 3

We don’t really know what the Sixers are because they’ve hardly played together. The platonic ideal of Maxey-George-Embiid is terrifying. And Edgecomb, Oubre, Grimes, Drummond is a good supporting cast.

I know what the Celtics are, and I’m not worried about them. Give me Boston in 7, please.

Also, if you know you’re history… the last 6 time we’ve been in the second round we’ve lost when we had home court (Indiana in ’24, Miami in ’23, Indiana in ’13) and won when we didn’t (Boston in ’25, Miami in ’00, Atlanta in ’99).

Go Celtics.

Give me Philly. Not only we’ll have homecourt but the first 6 games of series will all be with just 1 day off, following a 7 game series by end of next rd Philly will probably have everyone injured. Look at the mins their starters are playing vs Boston.

And he didn’t even mention Maxey, right? We have a problem with Maxey’s speed.

He did talk about the speed of the guards.

1

After that jaw dropping quarter and a half or so, this game became boring to watch the rest of the way. No anxiety, no emotions, nothing! I couldn’t even finish my chardonnay tonight! Darn! 🤣🤣🤣

Philly just looks flat out better to me. That schedule would likely wear down Tatum and White as much as it would Embiid. White in particular looks cooked.

I also want to see KAT dominate another small team, not get into foul trouble against Embiid and lose his mojo.

Whatever. It’s not like we get to vote. Go Knicks.

Yeah fuck it don’t care who we play next rd just glad we’ll get weekend off while Boston Philly play a Game 7 on Saturday.

THE 2026 NY KNICK ARE THE BEST TEAM IN THE HISTORY OF BASKETBALL!!!!

Boston to me is the easier opponent.

Their bigs suck and Philly has an athletic backcourt that could cause issues

That was F-ing fantastic.

I want Philly because of home court (and we’re much better than them), but we can beat either one of them.

Re Mitch possibility of suspension:
He didn’t instigate it.
He didn’t throw a punch.
Jokic didn’t even get suspended for running all the way down the court to get in McDaniels’ face.

And probably most importantly:
He has no history of this.

1

Also can we take a moment to just appreciate the fact that this is the fourth year in a row that we’ve gotten to the second round of the playoffs.

I want a title more than anything by my god we’ve been blessed with watchable basketball for a nice stretch now. It’s officially an era and after 20 years of irrelevancy, it is so nice.

Thank you Leon (and Brunson).

2

Crazy part is during the Riley/JVG era Knicks reached 2nd rd 9 years in a row and 11 of 12 years if you go back to the Pitino/Stu Jackson era right before Riley arrived.

1

As stressful as those two losses were it was just what we needed to wake us up and also for the KAT offensive hub to finally click. It’s fucking beautiful to watch KAT play Center Point like Jokic and dominate games without scoring. It seems to have unlocked another level for OG too. And it forces teams to make an impossible choice bc if they double JB, KAT can now do this shit but focus on KAT and JB can cook you. Throw in some good team defense and and a super pesky bench. Veterans who have all been in these battles?

We have everything we need to make this happen.

Like I said, the Knicks are clearly the class of the Eastern Conference. I’ve said that all year long, and it’s been ESPECIALLY true now.

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If Denver can’t beat Minn with all their injuries, Jokic might consider shooting his way out of Dodge City…

1

I think I’d rather play Boston, simply because our defenders match-up way better with Tatum and Brown than they do with Maxey specifically. OG and Bridges have shown they can keep up with both while Maxey is too fast for either and would cause a lot more issues specially if Embiid is healthy putting pressure on KAT and Mitch. But at the end of the day there’s no big reason to fear either of them, they’re good teams but the Knicks can certainly be better.

1

I like Jokic and prefer watching great players play over not great players; however, there’s something satisfying in seeing the teams that fired their good coaches last season struggle even more without them.

Julius not closing the game when the Wolves are down Ant, Donte and Donsunmu is… yuck.

Edit: he’s back in…and promptly throws an errant pass.

“It shows the kind of team that we are, what we can be. We knew we kind of gave two games away, so we wanted to come out and close out the series today.”

— Josh Hart

1

Like I said, the Knicks are clearly the class of the Eastern Conference. I’ve said that all year

They’ve almost won 58 games now!

I honestly can’t get over Walter’s safari outfit at the beginning of crocodile Dundee.

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