On a night when the Cleveland Cavaliers needed to respond loudly after their loss in Game 1 to the New York Knicks, they went completely mute.The game slipped away from them in Tuesday’s opener. Cleveland wasn’t even in it on Thursday. The Cavs slumped to a 109-93 loss to the New York Knicks in Game 2, leaving them in a 0-2 hole in the Eastern Conference Finals ahead of Saturday’s must-win Game 3 on home court.Poor shooting haunts the Cavaliers Needing to bounce back, the Cavs started brightly. They went 5-for-10 from beyond the arc, had good looks and spread the ball nicely. Sure, they went 10-for-23 from the field, compared to the Knicks’ 11-for-20, but on the back of Evan Mobley’s strong first period, going 4-for-6 and 10 points, they enjoyed a 27-24 lead. Then, the wheels fell off. Come the final buzzer, Cleveland would end on a woeful 38%, and Mobley added just four more points to his total.“We didn’t shoot the ball well,” Cavs head coach Kenny Atkinson said. “I thought we had a lot of good looks, good looks from three, good looks at the rim. I thought our process was right. But it wasn’t a good shooting night.”Kenny Atkinson says their shot quality was in the 97th percentile in the first half and feels like it was still pretty good in the second half"We knew coming into this series we were gonna have to make 3's...can easily go home and shoot 43%, maybe it's a different story."— Kris Pursiainen (@krispursiainen) May 22, 2026However, Atkinson saw positives from a night to forget. "We knew coming into this series we were going to have to make threes,” he said. “[We] can easily go home and shoot 43%, maybe it's a different story."Despite Cleveland’s poor execution, which took effect from the second quarter, the Knicks themselves weren’t lighting up Madison Square Garden up either, going 4-for-13 from three-point land and were unable to pull away from the Cavaliers, who shot 1-for-11 from deep.However, New York found joy in attacking the paint and scoring that way, with the third quarter being their moment to finally pull away.They hit 18 unanswered points as Cleveland disappeared into the night sky, unable to convert clean looks and going scoreless for more than five minutes. Worse still, they gave too much respect to Knicks guard Josh Hart, who caught fire, hitting 12 of his 24 points in the third quarter and connecting on all three of his three-point attempts. Until that third quarter, Hart hadn’t enjoyed the best of postseasons, with averages that fell below his regular-season mark. But he was able to feast as New York shot an impressive 56% from the floor, leaving Cleveland to pick up the scraps, going 44% from the field, but taking just 18 shots to the Knicks’ 23.And now Atkinson must put this game on the back burner and focus on Game 3 at home. A place where the Cavs have only lost once in the postseason.“We got a great home crowd, we have played well at home in the playoffs, so we need to get our legs under us quite honestly,” Atkinson said.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow