Trae Young silenced the New York Knicks crowd with a legendary game winner in his very first playoff appearance for the Hawks.
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The Knicks played host to the 5th-seeded Atlanta Hawks for the first playoff game at MSG in 8 years. There was a crowd of 15000 to greet the recent returnees to the postseason scene.
Fans at Madison Square Garden were treated to a playoff humdinger that will be the envy of rival factions. It’s true that they lost the game, but Knicks fans really would rather lose in the playoffs than not be here at all.
One of the great things about the crowd was how it would instantly go on ‘F*** Trae Young’ chants. Knicks fans seemed determined to get the Hawks guard to have a bad game. Their ploy, however, didn’t seem to work that well.
Trae Young responds after hitting ice-cold game winner over the Knicks
Trae Young finished the night with 32 points, 10 assists and the biggest shot of the game. His shot came with just seconds left in the game clock as the MSG crowd jeered him on.
Trae was, however, in a zone of his own that the Knicks couldn’t figure out all night. His floater over Julius Randle as the game clock expired found the likes of Spike Lee looking around despairingly. Ice Trae was loving the reactions, as he pointed out in the postgame presser:
“When you’re in the zone and everybody’s chanting F U. I don’t if y’all have had it, but I’ve had it a couple of times in college. I had it again tonight, so…It got real quiet for me at the end. And I wanted to hear those F-U chants again.”
“Everybody’s chanting F-U … It got real quiet at the end, and I wanted to hear those F-U chants again.”
–Trae Young after winning Game 1 in MSG pic.twitter.com/W2zHCrWNeh
— ESPN (@espn) May 24, 2021