Atlanta Hawks vs New York Knicks Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 04/18/26

The NBA playoffs are finally here, and one of the most intriguing series comes in the Eastern Conference between the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks. This matchup profiles as one that could be pretty similar to what we saw a season ago in the first round, as the Knicks knocked off the then-upstart Pistons in a competitive 6-game series that featured a couple of wild finishes. Atlanta enters this postseason fresh off an outstanding second half of the campaign, and no team saw their point differential increase more than the Hawks over the course of the last 30 games. However, a lot of that did come against a pretty weak schedule, and this is a much tougher test for a team that doesn’t have much of a veteran presence at key positions. Ultimately, this is a series that should be competitive and feature plenty of interesting basketball, but it’s still a matchup that pretty clearly favors New York. The cream should rise to the top over the course of a 7-game series, and that should start in Game 1 with a win and cover for the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

Atlanta’s offense should have some avenues for success, particularly when it comes to generating open threes for the likes of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who excelled against New York in the regular season. However, outside of NAW and some occasional bursts for Jalen Johnson, the Hawks ran into some real problems against Mike Brown’s defense down the stretch. Furthermore, the Knicks are a team that is very comfortable in the 4th quarters of these playoff settings, and it’s hard to overstate just how important that is against a fairly inexperienced team on the other side. From a schematic perspective, Atlanta will certainly look to disrupt Jalen Brunson by blitzing him with its rangy wing defenders in order to get the ball out of his hands in big spots. With that said, when it comes to swinging the ball and generating good looks for his teammates, I’ll certainly trust Brunson to consistently make the right read when it matters. Furthermore, the ancillary pieces on New York (Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, etc.) are simply more trustworthy compared to Atlanta’s personnel, which gives the Knicks a significant edge in this one.

If New York is going to start fast at home on Saturday, it will probably do so by at least a couple of possessions. In fact, the vast majority of teams that tend to win games in the NBA playoffs also cover spreads. We are now on a 6-year run of straight up winners covering the spread at nearly an 89% clip, and I see no reason for that to tail off this postseason. With that in mind, I’ll continue to follow this trend and lay a relatively short number with the Knicks in a game where New York should do enough to put away the Hawks in front of its home fans.

Hawks vs Knicks prediction: Knicks -5 available at time of publishing. Playable to Knicks -5.5

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