The Atlanta Hawks continued their mini road-trip on Monday night, picking up a 108-104 victory against the Indiana Pacers. Nickeil Alexander-Walker scored 34 points, tying a career-best nine three-pointers in the process. Lu Dort added 14 points for Atlanta. For the Pacers, Jay Huff led with 22 points with Quenton Jackson adding 20 points.
The big story of this game could only be the injuries/absences. The following players were either injured or rested last night for the Pacers (who were on the second
night of a back-to-back): Tyrese Haliburton, Paskal Siakam, Ivica Zubac, Aaron Nesmith, Andrew Nembhard, Obi Toppin, Kelly Oubre, and TJ McConnell, to name but a few, leaving the Pacers with just six available bodies.
NBA dot com’s summary of this game paints quite a picture when it comes to the Pacers absences and who was available:
“The players who sat out have a combined salary of about $193 million, while those on the court make about $15 million.”
For the Hawks, Jalen Johnson was sidelined in this game after the ankle tweak in New Orleans, while Jock Landale also missed out. In Johnson’s place, Lu Dort would start. Kingston Flemings was also absent due to a one game league suspension following an elbow in New Orleans.
If one is to be realistic about the situation that presented itself for Atlanta last night, it’s hard to conceive any situation where the Hawks should have work excessively hard or be in any position where this game is realistic doubt. But that’s exactly where the Hawks found themselves when it came to clutch time.
At several points in this game the Hawks established secure double-digit leads — 14 points, 15 points — in the second and third quarters. And in both instances, the Pacers pegged them back. A lack of size inside meant that when the Pacers found Huff, they also found a recipe that worked inside and led to consecutive baskets which wiped the lead in the second quarter for a spell.
In the third quarter, the Hawks shot 28% from the field, and then went on a nearly four minute field goal drought in the fourth quarter down the stretch, with Onyeka Okongwu’s hook fortunate to drop to give the Hawks a secure four-point lead with 10 seconds remaining.
With a second left and a good contest, it was pretty desperate stuff for the Hawks but they finally got their much needed field goal, and the Pacers’ juice finally ran out.
This Okongwu basket was also a rare example of the Hawks getting a basket in the paint, scoring just 26 points in the paint, only 10 of which came in the second half.
The Hawks found success early shooting the three, and fell flat shooting inside the arc, and decided the strategy was to just hoist threes where possible as players such as Alexander-Walker (nine threes), Corey Kispert (four threes in the first half) and Lu Dort (4-of-6 from three) found fortune outside. In the end, the Hawks shot 23-of-51 from three, and it’s the only reason they won this game. Atlanta shot 45% from three and 38% from the field.
Hawks head coach Quin Snyder praised the quality of the win despite acknowledging the Hawks were not at their best at the rim while missing players themselves
“It’s a really good win,” said Snyder postgame. “We knew we were going to be in a dogfight kind of game. Huff gives him size and rim protection. We weren’t very good at the rim, and they made plays. We got a 10/12-point lead at one point, that’s when you hopefully have a chance to break the game open and we were never able to do that. At this point in the year, the way every team is kind of growing, hopefully, the Pacers can get healthy. That’s really hard. We had a little bit of that tonight with not having Jalen, Jock, and Kingston. We missed a lot of layups, and some of that was because we were playing against a team who had size. Good to get out of here with a win, all wins are good. These are the type of games, close games, that help you get better.”
I couldn’t disagree more with the general sentiment here that this was a ‘good win’. While all wins ultimately add to the Hawks’ record, so from that point of view they’re ‘equal’ in that they all add a ‘+1,’ not all victories are equal in how they’re made, and not all victories are ‘good.’
For example, how would you compare the recent victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers with this victory? Or the absolute drumming of Charlotte earlier in the season? Yes, they all added one win to the Hawks’ record, but the perception around them and how the Hawks performed are completely different.
Adding to that, while the loss of Johnson, Flemings, and Landale in this game are note worthy, Snyder has no leg to stand on by mentioning that the Hawks missed these players while Indiana was missing all who they were missing.
With respect to the ‘Super 6’ as they were dubbed by the Indiana broadcast (and there’s lots of good things to say about those six players), the Hawks — even without those three players — have so much more quality on paper of those who were available that this should never have been a close game. Not to mention depth; the Hawks ran out — almost on purpose, it felt — a deeper rotation than normal. Some of that accounts for injuries/absences, so there were minutes for Asa Newell and Zuby Ejiofor in the front-court, but the likes of Kispert and RayJ Dennis also got real rotation minutes.
Just to add further insult to the embarrassment of riches that were in Atlanta’s favor, five of those six Pacers players played real rotation minutes against Brooklyn on Sunday, and were tasked with playing — in most cases — 40-plus minutes with little time to rest.
The Pacers deserve a lot of credit for how close they brought this game, because they had absolutely no right to be anywhere close to winning this game. Everything that was stacked against them should have resulted in a double-digit loss at the bare minimum.
But plays from Huff on both ends of the floor, energy from Kobe Brown coming off the bench, the tenacity of Braden Smith (who I thought was excellent) kept the Pacers close enough at times to make a run and keep the Hawks within striking distance of a run, which they made multiple runs to get back into the game.
From the Hawks’ perspective, it was clearly not working at the rim so they dialled in from the perimeter. Against New Orleans, the three-point shooting was deplorable, but was excellent last night and was Atlanta’s saving grace. So, in that regard, that’s a positive the Hawks can build on that they can bounce back from an extremely cold performance to an extremely high volume performance, led by Alexander-Walker’s nine threes leading to 34 points on 12-of-25 shooting and 9-of-15 from three:
Postgame, Snyder praised Alexander-Walker’s ability to defend while also continuing to hit shots, also crediting the role of CJ McCollum in Alexander-Walker’s performance.
“The thing about Nickeil is he’s still playing on the defensive end too,” said Snyder postgame. “He seems to make plays on both ends of the floor. He’s playing with so much confidence. I thought CJ did a really good job of finding him late. I liked the shots that CJ was getting too, you just have certain nights that the ball won’t cooperate. Nickeil hit big shots for us, it seemed like, the whole game.”
With Johnson and Flemings out — in addition to Alexander-Walker’s hot hand — McCollum took more of a playmaking role in this game, dishing out 12 assists in total and the first time McCollum has registered 10 or more assists in a game in over three years.
While McCollum finished 4-of-17 from the field, his contributions in the playmaking department do help make up for the volume of misses.
Elsewhere across the roster, Lu Dort put in a fine performance in the starting lineup, shooting 5-of-10 from the field and 4-of-6 from three. Dort hit what I thought was a huge three in the third quarter to stop the bleeding and prevent Indiana from getting too close:
This was, arguably, one of the most important swings in the game. Had Huff hit that three, the Pacers would have cut the lead down to two points. Dort’s three really punished that miss, taking the lead up to eight points and buying the Hawks some immediate relief. If there was a spot when the Hawks sorely needed a good night shooting the three from Dort, this was the one and he delivered.
While everyone will forget the nature of this victory soon enough, the overarching takeaway, again, is that the Hawks were easily beaten inside the paint (conceding 54 points). This is Snyder’s biggest concern from this game, spotting the trend that has occurred in several games now (but not before doubling down on his belief that this was a good win).
“Every win is a good one, and people say that because it’s true,” said Snyder. “Tonight was one of those nights. I thought when they did make the late run, we didn’t get rattled. We didn’t do everything right. The Pacers made some plays. We had a stretch where we put them on the foul line and that makes it hard because we can’t get any force offensively, or thrust. didn’t get any offensive thrust. The paint is something that we’ve got to shore up one way or the other. That’s probably the biggest thing for us right now defensively is just not doing a better job protecting the paint because it’s going to be real difficult to win when teams score on the paint like these guys did, and some other teams have too.”
The Hawks (4-4) are back in action on Wednesday for the first of two meetings against the Washington Wizards (4-3), the first of which wraps up their three game road-trip.
Until next time!
