CJ McCollum said the Atlanta Hawks pushed the New York Knicks to the limit, even though New York finished the series with three straight blowouts. Speaking Sunday on SiriusXM NBA Radio, McCollum stood by the claim and said the Hawks made the matchup harder than the final margin suggests.
The reason the remark is getting attention is simple: the Knicks did not merely survive a close series, they closed it with control. After the Hawks won two of the first three games and New York trailed 2-1, the Knicks answered with victories by 16, 29 and 51 points. By Game 6, New York led 83-36 at halftime, and its starters sat for the final 14:45 of game time.
McCollum's defense of the Hawks rests on what happened before the series broke open. The Hawks outscored the Knicks by nine points across the first three games, and New York twice had to escape from late trouble, including one game lost after blowing an eight-point lead with less than five minutes left and another lost after trailing by nine with less than eight minutes left. On that reading, the Hawks did enough early to force New York into a long fight, even if the finish turned one-sided.
That is the friction in McCollum's comment. Saying a team pushed another to the limit sounds like a seven-game grind, not a series that ended with a 51-point victory and a bench-heavy fourth quarter in the clincher. Yet the numbers also show why the claim is not empty: the Hawks took two of the first three contests, and the Knicks did not pull away until they had already absorbed real pressure.
What follows from that is less about debate than definition. If limit means the point where a series can still swing, McCollum has a case; if it means the ending stayed close, the Knicks' final three wins erase it. New York finished 16-3 overall and 12-1 when not playing Atlanta in these playoffs, which makes the Hawks' early resistance the only part of the bracket that can credibly support his view.
For anyone searching the remark now, that is the split-screen: McCollum is crediting the Hawks for the hardest part of the series, while the final box scores belong to the Knicks. The next question is not whether New York won, but how much of the series should be judged by the tight first three games rather than the three decisive answers that ended it.
