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Chris Herring, ESPN senior writer
NEW YORK – As the final seconds ticked away, Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young knelt on the New York Knicks midcourt logo at Madison Square Garden, where he has inflicted so much pain and received so much scorn, and He pretended to roll. dice as he and his team punched their ticket to Las Vegas for the NBA Cup semifinals this weekend.
Sparked by a furious second-half run, Young and the Hawks outscored the Knicks 108-100 on Wednesday night, the latest example of the three-time All-Star having some fun in New York.
Young and his club eliminated the Knicks from the playoffs at the Garden Court in 2021, and Young highlighted the victory by taking a bow at center court and saying goodbye to the crowd. He came up with a different celebration before Wednesday night’s victory.
“We’re going to Vegas, so that’s what I had to do,” he said of rolling the dice.
Young added: “I planned it with my little brother a few days ago. We had talked about it and I mean, I knew what I was going to do.”
Knicks star Jalen Brunson didn’t get mad at Young for his celebration, saying simply, “We should win the game if we don’t want him to do that.”
De’Andre Hunter scored 24 points and Jalen Johnson had 21 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists for the Hawks, who will face the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday for a spot in the NBA Cup title game.
Young, who finished with 22 points, 11 assists and 5 rebounds, was a big catalyst for the Hawks in the second half. The Knicks (15-10) had led most of the game and were up 66-62 midway through the third quarter when Young scored eight straight points, including 3-pointers on consecutive possessions, to give Atlanta (14-12) the lead.
The Hawks tightened their defense after halftime, forcing the Knicks into three 24-second violations. Guard Dyson Daniels, arguably the league’s most disruptive defender through the first third of the season, stifled Brunson and limited him to 14 points (his second-lowest total of the season) on 15 shot attempts. The repeated stops allowed Atlanta to come out and run in transition, allowing the Hawks to outscore New York 61-46 in the final two quarters.
The other important factor was on the glass, where Atlanta finished with 22 offensive rebounds, 14 of which came in the second half. On one possession in the fourth quarter, the Hawks caught four consecutive turnovers, which they capitalized on with a layup by Onyeka Okongwu.
“That’s where you take the soul of a team, and we felt like we did that tonight,” veteran Hawks center Clint Capela said.
Capela, taking advantage of the Hawks’ routine of playing music by an artist from the city they just won, blasted a song by rapper 50 Cent in the Garden’s visiting locker room after the victory. The center said the nature of the win, particularly the vise-like defense in the second half, indicated that Atlanta can be a force as its athletic youngsters continue to develop.
“I think it shows us that we can be a really special team when we can close out multiple possessions like that. We’re improving in terms of our pace, and some of our new guys are starting to gain confidence,” Capela said of the Hawks, who have defeated the Celtics, Cavaliers and Knicks, three of the top four teams in the East, as part of this season’s Cup.
The end of the game could not have been more different from the beginning. The Hawks, who dictated the pace in the decisive final minutes, seemingly got what they wanted as the Knicks charged to force the ball out of Young’s hands. Atlanta played those possessions to perfection and recorded a total of five alley-oop dunks over the final six and a half minutes of the game; three of them were assisted by Young.
It was a complete turnaround from the first few minutes of play, in which the Hawks (who use four young players in the rotation, each under the age of 25) looked out of place and quickly fell behind 11-2. Not long after that stretch, the scoreboard at the Garden went blank, leaving fans and players unsure of the total.
“I thought we were a little nervous at the beginning of the game,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “Someone mentioned to me that the scoreboard wasn’t working from the beginning and maybe that was a good thing.”
