Hawks vs. Knicks Game Preview: Styles Clash as New York Visits Atlanta

The first two meetings between the Hawks and Knicks have featured a blowout and a thriller. What can we expect when the play on Wednesday night?

Both Atlanta and New York are at the points in their respective seasons where results don’t matter so much as the information the teams draw from them. While not yet mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in the uninspiring Eastern Conference, both teams have been effectively out of the hunt since November, and should therefore be more concerned with their prospects for next season and long-term arcs as teams. What the final 16 games of this year tell them could inform the steps they take from here.

The Hawks will face the Knicks with little more than this on the line, but Wednesday’s game should still provide an important test for a team with lofty aspirations for next season. Atlanta talks of being a playoff team in 2021; New York is the kind of opponent those teams handle without much trouble. But in two meetings this season, the Knicks have given Atlanta all the trouble it can handle -- first in a mid-December blowout, then in a narrow double-overtime Hawks victory -- with their physicality and aggression.

“I think it’s the idea that they came into the start of the year and just wanted to be a bulky, physical, aggressive, New-York-state-of-mind type of team. They got off to a slow start, but I think when you watch them at their best, that’s what they are,” Lloyd Pierce said. “It’s a physical team. They’re not grace, finesse, pretty movement. They’re trying to go right at you.”

Game Time: Wednesday, March 11, 2020, 7:30 p.m.

Location: State Farm Arena, Atlanta, GA

TV: FOX Sports Southeast, MSG Network

Streaming: NBA League Pass, FOX Sports Go, MSG Network

Spread: Atlanta -4.5

New York plays hard, even if it lacks the talent or long-term vision for those efforts to bear much fruit; their effectiveness on the glass and 22nd-ranked defense indicate some baseline level of effort and intensity, and it shows in the way the Knicks have competed for most of the season. That, however, can only get a team so far in a league replete with significantly more talented opponents. New York ranks 26th in the NBA in net rating (two spots ahead of Atlanta) and leads only the Warriors in offensive efficiency (which is tantamount to ranking last).

While the Knicks generate passable shots, take decent care of the ball, and crash the offensive glass better than any team in the NBA, their utter lack of shooting has severely weighed down their offense. Only the Hawks and Warriors shoot worse percentages from 3, and no one takes a lower proportion of their shots from beyond the arc. (The Hawks, while inaccurate from long distance, have one lethal shooter and at least get up enough triples to keep the floor spaced.) New York does attempt the fifth-highest share of shots at the rim, but converts them at only 60.6 percent. Losing Marcus Morris, a 44 percent 3-point shooter in 43 games with the Knicks, at the trade deadline did nothing to help those numbers.

Despite similar records and point differentials, New York and Atlanta take vastly different approaches to the game. Where the Knicks want to constantly pressure the rim and lack proper offensive spacing, the Hawks have embraced a four- and five-out offense that gives their creators more room to work. Atlanta prefers to compromise defenses with its quickness and ball movement, whereas New York generates advantages with its size and brute force.

“That’s a contrast, in a lot of ways, to how we are,” Pierce said. “We want to space, we want to open the floor up, we want to get downhill, we want to make extra passes to try and move the defense. We have a lot of skilled players. So if they’re able to impose their will, it makes it tough for us, just as if we’re able to impose our will, it makes it tough for them.”

Both teams will be relatively healthy Wednesday night. Atlanta remains without Clint Capela (heel), Skal Labissière (knee), and DeAndre’ Bembry (abdomen/groin), but all of the core rotation pieces from the last month are healthy and ready to go. The Knicks don’t have any injuries to report. The Hawks have a rest advantage with New York on the second night of a back-to-back, though no Knick played more than 30 minutes last night against Washington. The outcome of Wednesday’s game will likely fall somewhere between the two extremes of a blowout and a double-overtime thriller, but the Hawks would be pleased to keep Monday night’s momentum moving forward no matter what the final margin.