Trae Young stings Knicks again, leads Hawks to NBA Cup semis

NEW YORK -- As the final seconds melted away, Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young kneeled down on the New York Knicks' midcourt logo at Madison Square Garden -- where he has inflicted so much pain and received so much scorn -- and pretended to roll dice as he and his team punched their ticket to Las Vegas for the NBA Cup semifinals this weekend.

Buoyed by a furious second-half run, Young and the Hawks pushed past the Knicks 108-100 on Wednesday night, the latest example of the three-time All-Star having a bit of fun in New York.

Young and his club eliminated the Knicks from the playoffs on the Garden floor in 2021, with Young punctuating the victory by taking a bow at center court and waving goodbye to the crowd. He came up with a different celebration ahead of Wednesday night's victory.

"We're going to Vegas, so that's what I had to," he said of rolling the dice.

Young added: "I planned that one with my little brother a few days ago. We had talked about that, and I mean, I knew what I was going to do."

Knicks star Jalen Brunson didn't begrudge Young for his celebration, saying simply, "We should win the game if we don't want him to do that."

De'Andre Hunter scored 24 points and Jalen Johnson had 21 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists for the Hawks, who will square off against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday for a spot in the NBA Cup title game.

Young, who finished with 22 points, 11 assists and 5 rebounds, was a massive catalyst for the Hawks in the second half. The Knicks (15-10) had led most of the game and were up 66-62 midway through the third period when Young scored eight straight points, including 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions, to give Atlanta (14-12) the lead.

The Hawks ratcheted up their defense after halftime, forcing the Knicks into three 24-second violations. Guard Dyson Daniels, arguably the league's most disruptive defender through the first third of the season, bottled up Brunson and held him to 14 points -- his second-lowest total of the season -- on 15 shot attempts. The repeated stops allowed Atlanta to get out and run in transition, which allowed the Hawks to outscore New York 61-46 over the final two quarters.

The other massive factor was on the glass, where Atlanta finished with 22 offensive rebounds, 14 of which came in the second half. On one possession in the fourth quarter, the Hawks nabbed four consecutive misses of their own, which they capitalized on with an Onyeka Okongwu layup.

"That's where you take a team's soul, and we felt like we did that tonight," veteran Hawks center Clint Capela said.

Capela, tapping into the Hawks' routine of playing music by an artist from the town in which they have just won, blared a song by rapper 50 Cent in the Garden's visiting locker room after the victory. The center said the nature of the win, particularly the vise-like defense in the second half, indicated that Atlanta can be a force as its athletic youngsters continue to develop.

"I think it shows us that we can be a really, really special team when we can shut down multiple possessions like that. We're getting better in terms of our rhythm, and some of our new guys are starting to really gain confidence," Capela said of the Hawks, who have defeated the Celtics, Cavaliers and Knicks -- three of the top four teams in the East -- as part of this season's Cup.

The end of the game couldn't have been more different from the beginning. The Hawks, who dictated the pace in the late, deciding minutes, seemingly got whatever they wanted as the Knicks blitzed to force the ball out of Young's hands. Atlanta played those possessions perfectly and logged a total of five alley-oop dunks over the game's final six and a half minutes; three of them were assisted by Young.

It was a complete reversal from the opening minutes of play, in which the Hawks -- who use four young rotation players, each under age 25 -- looked out of sorts and quickly fell behind 11-2. Not long after that stretch, the scoreboard at the Garden went blank, leaving fans and players alike unsure of the running tally.

"I thought we were a little nervous at the beginning of the game," Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. "Someone mentioned to me that the scoreboard wasn't working early on, and maybe that was a good thing."