Trae Young made an “A” with his hand as he walked off the court after the Hawks’ Game 2 loss at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.
The message was clear: “I’ll see you in the ‘A,’” he said, with the No. 5-seed Hawks going 1-1 in the first two games of their first-round NBA playoff series vs. the Knicks, who as the No. 4 seed have home-court advantage and got the first two games in New York.
After stealing a game on the road, the Hawks get games 3 and 4 at home in Atlanta, in front of a near-capacity State Farm Arena crowd. Game 3 will be 7 p.m. Friday and Game 4 will be 1 p.m. Sunday.
“I hope Atlanta’s ready to bring that energy,” Young said. “I hope it’s loud. I hope everybody’s excited to have the playoffs back in the ‘A.’”
With the series tied, returning to their home court comes at a good time for the Hawks, who ended the regular season with the longest active home win streak in the league (11 games). The Hawks had a bad second-half shooting effort in Wednesday’s loss (27.5% from the field and 15.8% from 3-point range), but will get back to familiar territory in their own gym.
Madison Square Garden, of course, was extremely rowdy in the first two games. Too rowdy, at times, as the Knicks on Thursday announced a ban for one fan who spit on Young in Game 2, with the team apologizing to Young and the Hawks for the incident. In games 3 and 4, the Hawks are ready to change the subject everyone’s been talking about, wing Kevin Huerter said, from the environment at MSG amid the Knicks’ first playoff appearance since 2012.
They want to show off State Farm Arena and their own home crowd.
“We’re excited, honestly,” Huerter said. “We’re excited to flip the script. All you’ve heard about the last week is how great, how loud MSG is, how crazy their fans are, how it’s great to have New York basketball back, blah, blah, blah. We’re ready to get back in front of our fans and hear them and flip the script a little bit.”
Of course, playing on home court doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything. There still are several things the Hawks will need to clean up, from their shooting going completely cold in the second half, to giving up 13 offensive rebounds yet again, to letting Knicks guard Derrick Rose tear them up.
But the energy of a home crowd certainly can help, and players can benefit from that, interim coach Nate McMillan said.
“The energy, you can feed off of that,” McMillan said. “It doesn’t guarantee you anything. You have to play the game, and you hope to take that energy and feed off it like New York did (Wednesday) night. Their building was loud. We controlled the first half of the game. The second half they came out and basically was the team that played with more urgency in that game.
“Their crowd got behind them, and they were able to get back into the game and eventually win that game. So it doesn’t guarantee you anything, but that energy, hopefully your players can feed off of that. So we’re looking forward to playing in our building (Friday) night.”
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