{"id":643354,"date":"2026-05-01T19:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/643354\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T19:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T19:24:08","slug":"how-to-lose-an-nba-playoff-game-by-50-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/643354\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Lose an NBA Playoff Game by 50 Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday night, as the New York Knicks<\/a> and Atlanta Hawks battled it out in Game 6 of their opening round playoff series, I was at an event in Downtown Manhattan for an author promoting his new book. About midway through, a guy sitting in front of me pulled out his phone, and the logos of each respective team caught my eye. What followed was maybe my first ever quadruple take, as the man\u2019s screen read: KNICKS 72, HAWKS 22.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, is that\u2026real?\u201d I asked, sheepishly tapping him on the shoulder. Surely I had fallen victim to some elaborate prank. Maybe there was a glitch in Google\u2019s box score software. The Hawks being down by 50 points, with four minutes still left in the first half, seemed legitimately impossible. Factor in the circumstances of the game\u2014the Hawks needed a win to keep their season alive, they were playing on their home court, and the series had been relatively competitive in the five games prior\u2014and the deficit seemed even more unlikely.<\/p>\n

Sadly for the ever-tortured Atlanta fanbase<\/a>, that lopsided score was real\u2014and the night would only get worse from there. At the final buzzer, the scoreboard read 140-89 in favor of New York. One hundred and forty to eighty-nine. A 51-point win to eliminate a team from the postseason. This was a historic ass whooping, with the Knicks setting an NBA playoff record for largest halftime lead (47), largest lead ever held at any point of a playoff game (61, which came when they were up 101-40 in the third quarter), and becoming the first road team to ever score 100 points before the home team had 50<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The question is: How did this happen? How did a team that had the Knicks on the ropes just over a week ago go out in such epically sad fashion? The recipe for losing a do-or-die game by 51 points goes a little something like this.<\/p>\n

Let OG Anunoby get blistering hot<\/p>\n

The quiet Knicks forward is many things: an All-NBA defender, proud owner of phonebook-ripping arms, the apple of Anne Hathaway\u2019s eye<\/a>, British. He\u2019s generally not known, however, as a world-renowned scorer. You wouldn\u2019t know that from his Game 6 performance, in which Anunoby scored 14 points in the first quarter, making six of his first seven shots and terrorizing Atlanta\u2019s defense inside and out. That offensive explosion right out the gate helped the Knicks mount a 40-15 lead after one quarter, meaning, yes, Anunoby was just one field goal shy of outscoring the Hawks by himself.<\/p>\n

Turn the ball over 19 times<\/p>\n

One thing you want to generally avoid in a basketball game is giving the other team the ball. This is a simple concept to grasp but a difficult one to execute, as the Hawks demonstrated on Thursday night. The main offender here was Nickeil Alexander-Walker, the NBA\u2019s recently crowned Most Improved Player, who coughed up five turnovers. The Knicks had just nine turnovers as a team, zero of which came from Jalen Brunson, a remarkable feat for someone who handles the ball as much as the Knicks\u2019s captain does.<\/p>\n