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🏀 Five things to know Friday
- Knicks take largest halftime lead in NBA history en route to roasting, ousting Hawks. New York's 47-point halftime lead pretty much says everything you need to know about this one. Yes, Knicks 83, Hawks 36 … at the half. At one point, it seemed like the Hawks were making more turnovers than a Georgia farm stand, and the Knicks made them pay at the other end. A good chunk of the second half was spent just dissecting where Atlanta goes from here. No Knicks team had ever scored as many points in a single playoff game as this team did, and with the final 140-89 drubbing, New York gets a chance to rest and wait on the winner of Saturday's Game 7 between the Celtics and 76ers because the latter defeated the former in Philadelphia last night. And in the West, the Anthony Edwards-less Timberwolves sent Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets on their summer vacation to take that series 4-2. And as our internal NBA team has been doing throughout the postseason, here's our analysis on last night's winners and losers.
- Kevin Durant will not play in Game 6 versus Lakers. The conventional wisdom was that the Rockets wouldn't stand a chance against the Lakers without their best player, yet here we are, entering a Game 6 after Houston won the last two contests without the superstar. Should Houston manage to pull another W without KD, it would only be the fifth time in NBA history that a team has dropped the first three games of a playoff series only to come back and force a Game 7. For their part, the Lakers appear to be doing their best to make this happen, as our Sam Quinn writes about how their offense has stalled.
- Storm's Lexie Brown has been getting death threats. Seattle guard Lexie Brown said she has…