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Clint Capela opens up trash talk before Game 5, ready to send Knicks 'on vacation'

Ryan Young
·Staff writer
·3 min read

Clint Capela is ready for Game 5, and he’s not holding back.

The Atlanta Hawks center sounded off on the New York Knicks on Tuesday after a physical and testy Game 4 of the series on Sunday — which featured a minor altercation and left Hawks forward John Collins needing stitches.

“They are trying to play tough, push our guys around and talk s***,” Capela said. “But we can do that too. We showed them as soon as we came back here that we can push guys around too. We can talk s*** as well, so what you gonna do about it? And we can get a win with it. So what you gonna do about it?

‘Oh, Game 4, you're coming back again, well it’s going to happen again. We win the game, we talk s*** and we push around. So what you gonna do about it?”

As for Wednesday night’s Game 5 at Madison Square Garden, where the Hawks can end the series with a win?

“Now we’re coming to your home to win this game again and send you on vacation,” Capela said.

Derrick Rose: ‘I’m too old for that s***’

The Hawks surged ahead in the second half of Sunday’s 113-96 win over the Knicks in Atlanta, which gave them a 3-1 series lead headed into Wednesday night.

Collins was hit in the face by Julius Randle, who was trying to make a move to the hoop, in the third quarter and drew an offensive foul after a video review.

He needed four stitches on his upper lip, but returned to the game.

"I loved it," Collins said after the game, via The Associated Press. "I felt like from the very start, we came out with the mindset that we were not going to let their physical game get to us. We matched their physicality and played our game."

Though Randle said he was just making a basketball play, and Collins didn’t seem too upset by it, Capela — who is averaging nine points and 13 rebounds per game in the series —said he viewed things a bit differently.

"I was like, all right, that says it all," Capela said of that play, via ESPN. "You don't have any more solutions but playing that way. You think you're playing hard doing fouls like that but that's not the game. If you can't play hard the right way, that's not playing hard. Those flagrant fouls, those are not in-the-game fouls. You're just trying to look physical but it's not working. It's kind of a last solution.

"That was a dirty play, retaliation or not. That's not how you play hard. Maybe if you dunk on him it can be, all right, you got him back. But just shoving, we all can shove someone."

With their season on the line, though, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau isn’t trying to get caught up in the trash talking. That, he said, is “just noise.”

Derrick Rose, who has averaged 22.8 points and five assists per game so far in the postseason for the Knicks, is right with him.

“I’m too old for that s***, bro,” he said Tuesday, via Mike Vurkunov of The Athletic.

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