After getting embarrassed on Thursday night by the Brooklyn Nets, the Atlanta Hawks are going to get a second chance to beat them today. Atlanta is going to roll with their same starting lineup as well. Dejounte Murray, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Saddiq Bey, Jalen Johnson, and Clint Capela are the first five on the floor for Atlanta.
Dennis Schroder, Cam Johnson, Mikal Bridges, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Nic Claxton are the starters for Brooklyn.
The Hawks got off to a dreadful start in the game. They trailed 18-4 early in the first quarter and 34-16 after the first. In the second quarter though, Atlanta cut into that lead, outscoring the Nets 34-22 and only trailing by six at the half. Atlanta had momentum on their side, but it did not last. The Hawks have been one of the worst third-quarter teams in the NBA all year long and they continued that trend tonight.
In the third quarter, Brooklyn outscored Atlanta 38-25 and the Nets shot 74% from the field and 67% from three. The Hawks were not bad on offense in that quarter, but nowhere near the same level as Brooklyn. The Nets went into the 4th quarter with a 19-point lead and things only got worse from there for Atlanta.
Aside from Dejounte Murray, no one on the Hawks could find a way to get anything going on offense. While the Hawks were not perfect on offense in the first two games without Young, they did a good enough job and played well on defense to get a win. When the defense is as bad is it was last night, the offense has to be better and it was not.
The Hawks miss Young’s offensive capabilities, not even in the scoring sense. He finds ways to get his teammates easy shots and makes defenses cover him from everywhere on the court. Dejounte Murray is a good player, but he is not going to do that. While Young is out, Bogdan Bogdanovic and others are going to have to step up. It can’t be Murray and Jalen Johnson all the time. Young is going to be out for a while and the Hawks have to find a way to be better on offense or they will risk falling out of the play-in tournament.
For the Hawks to win today’s game, they need to defend the three-point line better, find a way to get the offense going and shoot from three better. Bogdan Bogdanovic and Jalen Johnson will have to be much better than they were Thursday night as well. In short, everyone needs to play better today for the Hawks to emerge victorious.
Leave a Reply