Fraud Night in the NBA

A contender gets eliminated by a team shredded by the injury bug. A No. 2 seed get pushed to Game 7. And a team goes down by 50 in the second quarter. Frauds as far as the eye can see.

Samson Threatening His Father-in-Law; Rembrandt; 1635

A contender gets eliminated by a team shredded by the injury bug. A No. 2 seed get pushed to Game 7. And a team goes down by 50 in the second quarter. Frauds as far as the eye can see.

Good morning. We have one Game 7. Maybe more? Let's basketball.

72-22, Q2, 4:39

Knicks 140, Hawks 89 (NYK wins 4-2)

A game so lopsided Mike Breen had to state on the air that the scorebug was not a typo.

This is Dyson Daniels right before he and Mitchell Robinson got ejected for a little scuffle. Fighting down 50 in the second quarter is amazing.

The tick-tock of this first half is pretty wild. The Hawks were actually up 11-9 four minutes in. The Knicks went on a 14-0 run. Atlanta scored a bucket, and New York went on a 9-0 run. Atlanta scored a bucket, and New York went on a 16-0 run. Atlanta hit a tech and a three, and New York went on a 12-0 run. Atlanta hit a three, and New York went on another 10-0 run to get us to 72-22.

That was all a 63-11 run over less than 16 game minutes. Season on the line for the Hawks, and you give up 63 points over 16 game minutes and only score 11. Incredible.

Halftime:

Credit to the Knicks for going down 2-1 in the season in a heartbreaker, resetting and beating the snot out of the Hawks three straight games. Mike Brown cited that after Game 3 he turned Karl-Anthony Towns into more a passing hub, which worked because of Atlanta's lack of interior size. Towns took four shots in 28 minutes and ... was kind of dominant (12-11-10, he did have 10 FTAs). That could carry into a series with at least one of New York's potential second-round opponents, but we'll get to that. Mikal Bridges got uncorked in this game (24 points on 10/12 shooting) and O.G. Anunoby was probably the player of the series.

This is how a title team acts. The Hawks, meanwhile, are nice but not nearly at the required level to contend. You wonder if the method by which New York dismantled them in the end – not just in Game 6, strange things can happen in a single game, but over the back half of the series – will influence decisions on chasing big stars or bringing C.J. McCollum back.