the biggest Knicks villain this series<\/a>, drilled the go-ahead bucket with 12.7 seconds left. It has been McCollum, not Brunson, who has owned this series.\u00a0<\/p>\nRing the alarm bells. Hit the panic button.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Knicks might not yet be on the ropes. But they\u2019re certainly reeling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now they\u2019re firmly on the back foot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They had a chance to flip the script and pull off their own late-game comeback after collapsing in Game 2. They trailed by 11 with 8:06 left in the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CJ McCollum hits the go-ahead shot in the Hawks\u2019 Game 3 win. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
With 3:50 left in the game, Karl-Anthony Towns was blocked at the rim by Jalen Johnson. OG Anunoby corralled the rebound in the corner and heaved a 3-pointer as the shot clock expired and somehow made it to cut the Knicks deficit to just two points.<\/p>\n
And after a stop, they had possession with a chance to tie the game or take the lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Brunson missed his floater. McCollum, who had gone quiet since a huge first half, drilled a jumper to extend the Hawks\u2019 lead to four points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Hawks have won two straight in this series. AP<\/p>\n
Anunoby hit another 3-pointer to cut the Knicks deficit to one point, but Johnson answered with a bucket of his own to re-establish a three-point Hawks lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miles McBride \u2013 on the floor in place of the benched Mikal Bridges \u2013 hit a 3-pointer to tie the game with 1:41 left. Brunson\u2019s and-1 gave the Knicks a three-point lead with 52.6 seconds left.<\/p>\n
He had a chance to ice the game, but air-balled his shot with 16.4 seconds left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, with the Knicks needing a stop, McCollum hit the game-winning jumper and shifted the balance of this series.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson had the ball in his hands with a chance to win. Captain Clutch came up empty.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1262,21,56784,80162,9,11,1104,10,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-207980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-playoffs","11":"tag-nba-playoffs-2026","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}