Near the end of the New York Knicks' Game 1 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday, the rowdy home fans started chanting, "Fuck Trae Young!" This despite the fact that it has been several years since Young earned the city's ire by knocking the Knicks out of the playoffs. Also, he currently plays for the Washington Wizards. Maybe the once-ubiquitous chant returned to the Garden in Game 1 just because it's fun to yell, or maybe it was a harsh appraisal of the 2025–26 Hawks' ability to offer up a fresh antagonist. The Game 1 crowd spoke too soon. By the end of the third quarter in Game 2, the home fans had found a new chant: "Fuck you CJ!"
If you are wondering who CJ is, I don't necessarily blame you. Just to clear things up: We are talking about CJ McCollum, who up until being traded to the Hawks in January had spent a handful of years fading into obscurity in the basketball wildernesses of New Orleans and Washington D.C. Thousands of people who watch basketball every night have not thought about this man in a half-decade.
And yet, McCollum came into this series as Atlanta's most accomplished postseason performer, and by the time Game 2 was over, he had put some fresh ink on his surprisingly robust playoff résumé. He finished the night with a game-high 32 points, leading the Hawks to a 107-106 victory.
McCollum had 26 points when the "Fuck you CJ!" chant started, and had just gotten into a little kerfuffle with Jose Alvarado, who seeks out kerfuffles with great fervor. McCollum smirked and nodded his head along to the chant for a little bit, but he also looked sheepish at having found himself in that position. Villainy may come naturally to a little gremlin like Trae Young, but not to a steady and understated operator like McCollum. He even faded from the game over the next few minutes, missing his next five shots while the Knicks got out to a 14-point lead.
McCollum can sneak up on you, though. It was his teammates who did most of the hard work to bring themselves back to within one point, but it was McCollum who provided the final flurry. All of a sudden, with two minutes left to play, McCollum found himself in a bucket-getting duel with Jalen Brunson, and by the time it was over the Hawks were leaving New York with a victory. With just over two minutes left to play, McCollum sized up Brunson, sent him reeling with a couple of crossovers, and then finished at the rim to make it 101-100, Hawks:
Same thing on the next possession, with McCollum just gliding past Brunson and tossing in a nice floater:
And then the finisher: a step-back jumper over OG Anunoby to give the Hawks the lead for good:
The game didn't quite end there—McCollum missed two free throws with six seconds left that gave the Knicks a chance to win on a buzzer-beater, but Mikal Bridges clanked the potential game-winner. That ending made for a funny scene in the postgame interview. Having been granted the Crown Of The Enemy by the MSG crowd, only to respond with three clutch buckets that won the game and two missed free throws that almost lost it, McCollum didn't really know what to make of everything.
"I ain't no villain, I'm a nice guy with two kids and a wife," said McCollum to start his postgame presser. "I made the hard shots and missed the easy ones, I'm gonna have to get in the gym and work on my wide-open free throws."
Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why the Knicks thought it would be a good idea to let McCollum size up Brunson—by far New York's worst defender—and take him in isolation with the game on the line. You just never imagine that a nice guy with a wife and two kids is the one you really need to worry about with the game on the line, I guess. It can be hard to wrap your mind around the fact that a guy who used to look like this is also a killer.
I have to admit that I had forgotten about what McCollum is capable of, right up until he had Brunson stumbling around out there. Then it all came back to me: His 41-point game in a quadruple overtime win against Denver in the 2019 playoffs, the 37 he scored in Game 7 of that series to send the Nuggets home, and on and on. This is a guy who has now played in 69 career playoff games, and has scored 25 points or more in 21 of them.
It seemed like McCollum's days of meaningfully contributing to an NBA season were long behind him. The last time this website wrote about him at any kind of length was February 2022, and that was just for the sake of making fun of Zion Williamson. But it's those nice guys you have to watch out for. He's 34 years old; he's got a wife and two kids; he looks like the friendly neighbor from an '80s family sitcom. He can still bust your ass.
