Kristian Winfield: The real Knicks finally decided to stand up

ATLANTA — Maybe the Hawks booked their flights to Cancun a day in advance.

Maybe they drank their own Kool-Aid and thought home-court advantage alone would be enough to force a sudden-death Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. Maybe the bright lights of a win-or-go-home playoff game proved too big of a moment for a young, inexperienced Hawks team.

Or maybe — just maybe — the Knicks have been the far superior team all along. Maybe the Knicks played with their food for the first three games of this series before deciding to barbecue the Hawks in Game 4.

Maybe the real Knicks, at long last, finally decided to stand up. And in standing up, they’ve unveiled a bona fide championship contender — the kind of team capable of running the table in the Eastern Conference and punching the franchise’s first ticket to the NBA Finals in 26 years.

The New York Knicks did that. They held the Hawks to 15 points in the first quarter and scored 20 points three times before the Hawks could do it once. They forced more turnovers (12) through the first quarter and a half of play than they gave up made field goals (seven). They broke the game wide-open with the kind of 39-4 run you barely see in video games and were up by 50 — yes, 50 — on the Hawks before the halftime break.

The Knicks built a lead as large as 61 points. They flat-out embarrassed the Hawks at home — or was it home? Because yet again, the Knicks turned State Farm Arena into MSG South, the only thing Hawks fans cheered in the first half being rapper Yung Joc’s performance of his hit song “It’s Going Down” in the middle of a second-quarter timeout.

Only two things went down on Thursday: The Hawks and a scrap between Mitchell Robinson and Dyson Daniels, resulting in both being ejected with looming potential ramifications for Robinson should the league decide to suspend him the first game of the Knicks’ second-round playoff series.

The Knicks, and their fans, can thank the basketball gods for this mid-series evolution into an Eastern Conference juggernaut — because had they drawn the Toronto Raptors in the first round and not the Hawks, the Knicks wouldn’t have faced the early adversity forcing them to change play styles on the fly.

Had the Hawks played their starters and beaten the Miami Heat in their season finale, the Knicks would have cruised to a first-round victory over a Raptors team they’ve beaten 14 times in a row. They would have had to do this soul searching in Round 2, with far less room for error.

In truth, the Hawks unlocked the Knicks’ full potential. When they stole Game 2 at Madison Square Garden then protected home court to take a 2-1 series lead in Game 3, the Knicks felt the fire beneath their feet, plus the piercing stare of an owner who’d set NBA Finals or bust expectations in January.

“I’ve got to give [Hawks head coach] Quin Snyder and his staff a lot of credit. They forced us — when I say us I mean not just our players, our coaches — they forced us to find ways to help the team be better,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said ahead of tipoff. “Sometimes when you win you make adjustments. Sometimes when you lose you make adjustments. You’re always trying to figure out how can we put our team in a better position to help them succeed on the floor. Not to say we have it figured out, but every single time that we step on the floor we’re trying to do that. We’re watching film, going through a million different hypotheticals, which you don’t do during the regular season.”

The Knicks haven’t been the same since their Game 3 loss in Atlanta. They beat the Hawks by 16 in Game 4 and 29 in Game 5 before embarrassing them by 51 to close them out on the road in Game 6. And it starts with Karl-Anthony Towns (12 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists), who recorded his second triple-double in his last three games, the only playoff triple-doubles of his career.

If the Knicks can keep it up — if they keep running offense through Towns, if Towns keeps playing inspired defense, and if the Knicks continue to play selflessly on both ends of the floor — there’s no team, at least not in the East, that can slow them down.

At least that’s how it felt at State Farm Arena against an inferior Hawks team on Thursday.

Should the Knicks meet the Boston Celtics in the second round, they can kiss the idea of 40-, 50-, or 60-point leads goodbye. They’ll be in a dogfight for their playoff lives, likely without home-court advantage if it’s Boston vs. New York in a No. 2 vs. No 3 series.

And guess what? Maybe the Knicks will evolve again. Maybe they’ll change play styles and run sets more tailored to Boston’s (or Philly’s) personnel and offensive schemes.

These Knicks aren’t as predictable as they were in past seasons. They’re more willing to experiment. More willing to trust each other. More willing to put the collective goal of winning a title above all else.

They look more like championship contenders than ever before. The real Knicks — your New York Knicks — finally decided to stand up.

Better late than never. The Knicks look the part they were cast for at the beginning of the season.