The Atlanta Hawks were unable to take their first home victory of the new season on Saturday night at State Farm Arena, falling short 117-100 at the hands of the NBA’s defending champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. Nickeil Alexander-Walker led the Hawks in scoring with 17 points, while Trae Young notched a double-double with 15 points and 10 assists. For the visiting Thunder, Chet Holmgren scored a game-high 31 points with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander adding 30 points.
For the second game in a row, the Hawks
were dealt with less than ideal injury news prior to the game. Jalen Johnson was ruled out with a right-ankle sprain, with Kristaps Porzingis (flu-like symptoms) and Zaccharie Risacher (right-ankle sprain) continuing to miss out having missed the Orlando game on Friday night. In their place, Onyeka Okongwu and Alexander-Walker remained in the starting lineup as they did in Orlando, joined by Mo Gueye. For the Thunder, Jalen Williams, Alex Caruso, Kenrich Williams and Isaiah Joe all missed out of this contest.
A less than ideal start for the Hawks to be already down three starters against a team like the Thunder, and matters unfolded perhaps as expected as the Hawks went down by double-digits in the first quarter as Holmgren hit four three-pointers en route to 14 first quarter points.
The Hawks made a strong reply in the second quarter, cutting the lead to one point late in the first half, before the Thunder entered the break with a five point lead. It was in the third quarter where the game was blown open in the Thunder’s favor.
The Hawks started the third quarter slow, and the Thunder opened the lead up to 13 points behind an 8-0 run to begin the second half behind Gilgeous-Alexander and Holmgren. The Thunder would go on to outscore the Hawks 39-25 in the quarter — the big difference in this period were the turnovers.
Turnovers were incredibly costly for the Hawks not just in the third quarter (eight) but for the game itself (16). It’s not so much the number (though, eight in a quarter is far too many) but how good the Thunder were off of them, scoring 16 points off the Hawks eight turnovers in the third quarter, and 29 for the game. Let’s look at the third quarter turnovers that cost the Hawks.
Alexander-Walker does well to telegraph the pass to the perimeter but his attempted pass inside to the running Gueye is itself intercepted as Holmgren steams back to take the pass away from Gueye. Gilgeous-Alexander then brings the ball up the floor, drives, and pulls up on a dime to hit the jumper over Dyson Daniels:
This was not the only time Holmgren came up with a play similar to this; it’s remarkable how well he moves and his height just gives him great defensive tools to be able to intercept lobs.
One reason any matchup with the Thunder becomes complicated is their defensive versatility: they have so many guys who can defend, and defend on the perimeter. This makes life difficult for Young on this possession as he’s swarmed on the pick-and-roll with Daniels as both Gilgeous-Alexander and Luguentz Dort converge to deflect Young’s pass and come up with the steal:
Again, the Hawks would come up with a good play, then turn the ball over, and the Thunder capitalize. This time in a late-clock situation, Gueye gets a good block in on Holmgren and then leads the break, but his pass back to the oncoming Daniels is picked off by Cason Wallace. Gilgeous-Alexander picks up the loose ball, weaves his way up the court, draws two to the ball and shifts it back to Holmgren who hits a three-pointer:
A good contest from Daniels all things considered (i.e., the size of Holmgren) but not sure what Gueye was doing doubling Gilgeous-Alexander and leaving Holmgren when Alexander-Walker is capable of defending.
Again, another situation where the Hawks come up with a good play, turn the ball over, and the Thunder punish it. Alexander-Walker again comes up with a steal — this time on the baseline — and delivers the ball to Young, who is almost certainly going to find Gueye for an alley-oop.
Once again, it’s thwarted spectacularly by Holmgren, who not only has the awareness to see the the play unfold and intervene, but keep the ball alive and lead the break himself, drawing a foul from Daniels with the Thunder already in the bonus and Holmgren converts the two free throws:
The Hawks come in transition, with Alexander-Walker’s probing drive unable to yield an opportunity at the rim, so he passes to Daniels. Daniels fakes and drives but his pass back to the corner is deflected by Isaiah Hertenstein for another turnover. The Thunder push ahead to Wallace, who finds Gilgeous-Alexander in the mid-range for another basket, leading to a 15 point lead and a Hawks timeout:
The Thunder were so methodical off of turnovers — they didn’t tend to rush and push it in transition hard and charge to the rim though that did happen on this possession where Ajay Mitchell comes up with the steal — pushing ahead to finish at the rim to punish another Atlanta turnover:
The Hawks did a better job holding onto the ball in the third from this point forward, though there was one more turnover which led to another OKC basket, as Gilgeous-Alexander pokes the ball away from Luke Kennard before finding Mitchell in the corner for a three:
The Hawks didn’t shoot poorly in this third quarter, shooting 53% from the field and 5-of-8 from three, but they gave up a lot of possessions and points to the Thunder, who blew the game beyond the Hawks.
Another issue the Hawks had in this game was keeping OKC off the offensive glass and second chance opportunities. While the Thunder grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, they were extremely efficient in converting these second chance opportunities, scoring 30 points. Contrast that with the Hawks, who also grabbed 15 offensive rebounds but could only manage nine second chance points — OKC’s size and length was too much for the Hawks all night long.
Wallace makes up for his own missed shot as he grabs the offensive rebound and finds Mitchell, who drives and (I promise) scores at the rim on the drive:
A missed three as the shotclock is about to expire from Jaylin Williams is collected by Aaron Wiggins and scored in amidst the crowd:
This was one of those possessions — and there were so many of these — where the Hawks almost come up with the steal. Daniels in particular knocked so many balls loose but the Thunder were able to recover them. On another night Daniels has maybe six steals. Poor from Okongwu here, ball-watching the shot going up and allows Wiggins to get in ahead for the offensive rebound.
Holmgren, as you can probably imagine, was a thorn in the Hawks’ side on the glass, steering home this miss from Wallace at the rim:
Similarly, his front-court running mate Hartenstein was able to tip in a couple of offensive rebounds himself, such as this one off the Wiggins miss:
Off of a well-contested Gilgeous-Alexander shot/miss, Dort collects the rebound and finds a cutting Holmgren, who is fouled at the rim by Okongwu, and would dispatch both free throws:
Off of a wild shot inside by Mitchell, Wiggins does a great job of hustling in front of Kennard to get to the loose ball and whips it back out to Williams, who drains the three:
With the game long gone in the fourth quarter, down 20 points, the rebounding concerns continued, as first Holmgren steers home a Hartenstein miss:
Before Hartenstein notches home a miss from Holmgren:
Difficult to win games conceding 30 second chance points on a night where the Hawks’ frontcourt is depleted. Throw in the turnovers — and OKC’s efficiency off turnovers — in that third quarter and the end result isn’t too much of a surprise. The fourth quarter was a slow affair, with both teams slowing down offensively, but by this stage the damage was done and the Hawks couldn’t find the same heroics from Orlando, and were consigned to their second home defeat of the season.
Speaking postgame, Hawks head coach Quin Snyder focused on the Hawks’ turnovers in the third quarter that saw the Thunder’s lead quickly increase back to double-digits, citing both the Thunder’s — and Holmgren’s unique ability to intercept plays — as well as mistakes from the Hawks.
“The third quarter, I don’t know how many of the first six of the first eight, four of the first five, possessions we turned over,” said Snyder postgame. “All of a sudden a four point (Thunder) lead jumps and now you’re looking at a double-digit lead again. Your margin for error, given some of the guys being our and, more importantly, playing a team of that calibre — Shae didn’t miss much, Holmgren came out making threes, I thought we adjusted to some of that. There’s a lot of things you have to overcome and you can’t be yourself. It wasn’t just one guy, everyone got into it — some of them were unfrorced, some of them were good passes. The one Trae tried to throw the lob, there’s not too many people in the league who make that play other than Chet Holmgren. But there were others where we handed them the ball, and when we do that we’re not going to be able to score.”
The Hawks’ offense just struggled to find the scoring output it needed to live with the efforts of Holmgren and Gilgeous-Alexander. It was Alexander-Walker who led the Hawks’ scoring effort with 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting from the field and — encouragingly — a much improved outing from three: 3-of-6 from downtown following his 1-of-10 display in Orlando. This type of output from Alexander-Walker — in addition to another two steals and a block — you can’t ask much more out of him. It’s the consistent players already on the squad who you expect more from.
Dyson Daniels has had a slow start to the season offensively, scoring eight points on 2-of-6 shooting from the field. While I think there’s some room for concern, I’m not going to react too strongly to difficult nights shooting the ball against this OKC side — that includes Trae Young.
Young scored 15 points on 5-of-12 from the field, 2-of-3 from three, and while he did have 10 assists on the night it also came with five turnovers. Young has, in seasons past, had some slow starts and two difficult defensive coverages in Orlando and OKC I think exacerbate those issues somewhat.
Elsewhere, Okongwu was drawn into shooting five three-pointers last night — a shot OKC were more than happy to live with — and Okongwu only converted one of those five attempts. The sample size is of course very small, but 30% on 3.3 attempts — off the back of an encouraging end to last season shooting the three — wouldn’t have been the start Okongwu was hoping for from three, but it’s a very small sample and early days. OKC were just happy to let him have those shots last night. On the plus for Okongwu, monster dunk to begin this game.
With no Porzingis or Jalen Johnson last night it meant more minutes for both Gueye and Asa Newell than they would ordinarily have seen.
Just like the Orlando game, Gueye was solid in his 23 minutes of action, scoring 11 points on 4-of-10 from the field and 2-of-6 from three (which is absolutely fine for Gueye). Gueye’s production right now I think is all relative — it’s a huge win for the Hawks that he’s playable at this stage of the season, because it would have been completely inconceivable at this point last year, and it speaks to his development. He had a couple of rough shots, but given that backline of Hartenstein and Holmgren I wouldn’t hold that against him too much.
Newell saw a lot more time on the court last night, playing just under 25 minutes and, similar to the Orlando game, was productive in his time on the floor scoring 12 points on 4-of-9 shooting from the field and 3-of-5 from three to go with 10 rebounds (seven of them being offensive rebounds) — his first double-double of his young NBA career.
Newell is taking — and hitting — his threes with a lot of confidence, such as this three on the catch in the first quarter as Wiggins closes out:
This next three in the second half was probably his most impressive last night; converting a straightaway three in the corner despite the contest:
“I think he’s worked at that, and guys find him” said Snyder of Newell’s three-point shooting. “That corner three for a player coming out of college that hasn’t taken a lot of threes, that’s a good place to begin to build your confidence. His instincts for the ball are really good. They (OKC) are big, and if you have to double SGA or trap in pick-and-roll, you’re in rotations and it makes it harder to rebound. Our ability to come up with some of those loose balls, like the turnovers, those things are impactful. I thought Asa did a good job for us not just making shots but his nose for the ball.”
Newell gave credit to his coaching staff, teammates, and his own preparation for his early success behind the arc, as well as highlighting the spacing difference between the NBA and college.
“It’s just my preparedness,” said Newell of shooting threes. “I’m in the gym every single day. It means a lot that the coaching staff has belief in me, and my teammates as well. In college, it’s just a different offense. In the college game, the floor is more shrunken and in the NBA there’s more space.”
On the glass, Newell was able to make a couple of plays happen, one for himself as he fights for the rebound against Holmgren and knocks the ball loose, resulting in an easy dunk off of his own making:
Off of a missed three from Kennard in the corner, Newell grabs the offensive rebound and finds a relocating Kennard, who doesn’t miss the second and hits the three:
“Asa is just being himself right now, playing with a lot of confidence and understanding he’s going to get open looks when he’s out there so just take them with confidence,” said Young of Newell. “He’s been doing it, and rebounding which he’s always been able to do. Those two things can get him on the floor and make an impact for us.”
Outside of Newell, there wasn’t a ton of positives for the Hawks last night. While a second successive home loss to start the season is disappointing, bearing in mind it was the second night of a back-to-back having been on the road the night before, in addition to being down three starters and against the defending champions I think probably should be taken into account before the pitchforks come out.
Players will return, the offense will improve, individuals like Daniels and Young will find better offensive rhythms because what they’re currently averaging just isn’t sustainable.
For now, the Hawks rest and regroup, and then head off to Chicago for a matchup against the Bulls (2-0) at the United Center. That game marks the first of a four-game roadtrip for the Hawks, which will take them into November.
Until next time!
