After the Cavaliers routed the Pistons 125-94 in Game 7 to win the second-round series, Kenny Atkinson’s brother Michael looked back on the coach’s Northport, Long Island beginnings—his Knicks connection through Phil Weber, the daily work with Jeremy Lin, and
When the final horn sounded on Game 7, the score looked like a statement: the Cavaliers trounced the Pistons 125-94 to win the second-round series.
Kenny Atkinson stepped into the noise afterward with a simple line that landed differently in Madison Square Garden than anywhere else. “I’m a New Yorker,” he said.
Going back to the arena, he added, still feels personal. Atkinson has “worked for the Knicks — know everybody there,” and his family’s ties run even deeper. “My whole family’s there basically. That’s special.”
It’s a detail people understand, even when they’re trying to process how quickly the moment has arrived. In the Eastern Conference finals. Atkinson may be the “temporary enemy of the Empire State” to some in New York. but his story doesn’t start with the Cavaliers. It starts on Long Island—specifically Northport.
His oldest brother, Michael Atkinson, put the roots in plain terms. “Phil Weber actually lived literally around the corner from us,” Michael told The Post.
Weber, a familiar name to Knicks fans, “knew Kenny.” Michael described him as “a super personable guy,” then connected that relationship to the pivot that brought his brother back to New York.
“When he was in the Lone Star State, quickly impressed Weber, who knew it was time to get Atkinson back home,” Michael said. Weber’s recommendation followed: “He ended up recommending Kenny to Mike D’Antoni, and Mike D’Antoni hired Kenny with the Knicks.”
That Knicks chapter mattered not just as a career move but as a kind of education in preparation—at least. that’s how the family remembers it. Kenny Atkinson spent four years at Madison Square Garden. from 2008 to 2012. where. Michael said. he “had the guys towards the end of the roster” to look after.
One of those players was Jeremy Lin. Michael explained that Kenny “worked with Jeremy Lin on a daily basis,” and added, “Jeremy Lin even gives Kenny a lot of credit for being ready when his number was called.”
The family say the Knicks loyalty wasn’t something that appeared out of nowhere for the playoffs. It was baked in. “We were Knicks fans forever,” Michael said.
The competitiveness, too, was a constant between the brothers—described as intense in the way basketball families can be, where confidence and pressure live side by side.
“Everybody was competitive, everybody had their own level of confidence,” Michael said.
Kenny. now 58 and still described by his brother as unusually driven. had a path that turned those habits into a profession. Long before he was head coach of the Brooklyn Nets from 2016 to 2020. or an assistant with the Warriors in 2022 when Brooklyn-late success turned into an NBA championship moment. Michael says there was already a kind of focus that stood out.
“It was discipline and work ethic passed down by their Marine officer father Neil, and Pauline, a no-nonsense mom who once chased Kenny with a Wiffle ball bat when he was a 6-year-old,” Michael said.
“When you have eight kids — eight boys — you better have discipline,” he added.
On a night when Game 7 ended 125-94, the family says that discipline looked like a switch that had been ready for years. Michael pointed to the kind of focus that doesn’t show up as talk. “He just took, and I think you saw it [during Game 7], that level of focus and intensity just to another level.”
The basketball ambition that got him there started early—and it started in Long Island programs that still remember him. Michael said Kenny was the only sibling pulled from Northport public schools for St. Anthony’s.
At St. Anthony’s, Kenny played for a program led at the time by the late Gus Alfieri, “a local basketball legend and St. John’s Hall of Famer.”
One former student, Alan Hahn, remembers the moment he saw Kenny as more than just a good player. Hahn. who would later play for the Friars and LIU and eventually become a Knicks analyst with MSG Network. described being starstruck when he watched Atkinson dominate a counselors-and-coaches game during a Long Island basketball camp in the 1980s.
“The first player that drew my attention and made me go, ‘Wow,’ was Kenny,” Hahn said.
“H e’s such a competitor, dominated the scrimmages, and I was just drawn to him ever since. … He was my first basketball idol.”
Hahn described something else, too: after Kenny’s rise, his willingness to pour his knowledge back into the area where it began. “Atkinson was all about paying it forward,” Hahn said.
Both Michael and Hahn recalled that Kenny’s teaching didn’t come off as classroom instruction. They called his “lectures” anything but academic.
“The guy was dripping with sweat when he was done,” Hahn said.
“When he was a player development guy, he was just as drenched in sweat as the player he was warming up for the game.”
Now, that same persona is reaching the edge of the sport’s biggest stage—while Long Island prepares to celebrate a homegrown success with the uncomfortable twist of rooting around it.
St. Anthony’s alumni affairs director Denise Creighton wrote on Facebook: “Of course I will be rooting for the Knicks,” then added, “but CONGRATULATIONS to Friar Alum Kenny Atkinson and the Cavs on their defeat of the Pistons.”
The funny thing about being from Northport isn’t just that you remember where someone started. It’s that everyone feels like they helped build it.
For Kenny Atkinson, the Garden may be a hostile place during the Eastern Conference finals. But for his brothers, his former camp memories, and the people who watched him sweat through the details back home, the story doesn’t end there. It’s still New York—or nowhere.
Kenny Atkinson Cavaliers Pistons Game 7 Eastern Conference finals Knicks Phil Weber Mike D'Antoni Jeremy Lin Northport Long Island St. Anthony's Alan Hahn Denise Creighton