Mikal Bridges took the last shot, which made him the easiest face to pin on the ending. That is how these games work. The ball finds one player, the buzzer sounds, and everyone else quietly backs away from the crime scene.
But the updated detail from Game 2 matters. The Knicks did not actually have a timeout on that final possession, even though the broadcast briefly showed one because of a data issue. That does not excuse the finish. It just clarifies it.
Once you strip away the idea that New York left a timeout unused, the possession looks less like a coaching blunder and more like a roster construction problem arriving on schedule. The Knicks were already in trouble before Bridges rose for the jumper. CJ McCollum had already done the damage on the other end. Brunson had already been stripped in the final 30 seconds. Jalen Johnson had already converted the ensuing play into a dunk that stretched Atlanta's lead. By the time Bridges missed at the horn, the possession was already carrying the weight of everything that had gone wrong before it.
That is why the final shot should not be the whole story. Bridges finished with 10 points on 3-for-10 shooting, so he was hardly electric. But if a one-point playoff game ends with New York needing him to improvise rescue offense, that says as much about the ecosystem as it does about the player. One recent account put Bridges at 18 total shot attempts through the Knicks' first two playoff games. That is not the profile of a player being consistently used as a live offensive engine. That is the profile of someone asked to solve the last riddle after spending most of the night outside the center of the action.
There is a version of the Knicks where Bridges is the release valve that makes everything cleaner. There is another where he becomes the emergency option everyone blames when the primary actions stall. Game 2 looked like the second version.
So yes, Bridges missed. That part is true and unavoidable. But the no-timeout reality makes the ending feel more revealing than embarrassing. The Knicks did not just get one shot wrong. They arrived at the final seconds with too little creation, too little margin, and exactly the wrong player left holding the blame.