The Atlanta Hawks concluded a three-game road-trip with a fourth consecutive loss this season against the Toronto Raptors on Monday night at Scotiabank Arena, 118-100.
Onyeka Okongwu led the Hawks with
17 points and 12 rebounds while Zaccharie Risacher added 16 points. For the Raptors, Brandon Ingram led with 19 points, and Scottie Barnes added 18 points.
This game, for the most part, takes a backseat in the context of the larger story emerging from Atlanta regarding Trae Young’s future in Atlanta seemingly coming to an imminent end.
While conversation before and after the game will understandably revolve around this discussion, the Hawks played a game in between against the Raptors — a team which the Hawks have already faced three times already, resulting in three defeats, including one as recently as Saturday.
The Raptors are an interesting matchup for the Hawks, particularly size-wise. The Raptors don’t play a conventional center, starting Collin Murray-Boyles at center alongside a forward line of Ingram and Barnes — both standing at 6-8.
The matchup gives the Hawks a chance to be aggressive themselves on the glass that their opponents typically play with when facing Atlanta. But, as it turned out, the matchup is just a nightmare one for the Hawks that they just cannot contain offensively and struggled to break down defensively.
The Raptors began on the front foot, running out to a 15-4 lead through a combination of easily picking the Atlanta defense — and some excellent early play from Murray-Boyles in the first quarter — but really limiting the Hawks offensively in the opening stretch. We’ll have a look at that opening stretch — not that it was the pivotal moment of this game but I thought it was, somewhat, emblematic of this game going forward.
The Hawks had issues breaking the Raptors defense; Toronto can switch a lot of ball screens and can contain penetration, and this contributes to the Hawks not being able to break down the defense.
You can see this in action on this play, where the Raptors switch and contain the drive from Risacher. RJ Barret gets greedy, and that’s what ultimately leads to Dyson Daniels getting free for a floater off the hand-off from Risacher:
While the Hawks score this basket, the means of which they did so wouldn’t be consistent and they would struggle often to break the Raptors down.
A similar story a few possessions later — the Daniels hand-off to Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Alexander-Walker’s penetration attempt off the Okongwu screen doesn’t yield an avenue to the rim. Okongwu then receives the ball, and he can’t make an inroads to the rim, so he has to get rid of the ball.
Risacher can’t get through the paint, and he has to pass out of his shot attempt as he gets off his feet. Risacher relocates after the pass to Okongwu, gets it back and gets a good look at a three which is missed:
Later in this stretch, Jalen Johnson is unable to get by Barnes — with help from Ingram looming on any drive — and Johnson settles for a jumpshot instead:
Defensively, the Raptors moved the ball — and their personnel — well to open up the Hawks’ defense.
On the drive, Barret gets the better of Daniels and gets into an advantageous position going to the rim, forcing the attention of Okongwu to shift, allowing Murray-Boyles a dump off at the rim:
On the slip screen from Barnes, Immanuel Quickley is able to get in front of Okongwu on the switch. The Hawks do not step up to meet him, but Quickley doesn’t take advantage and Risacher in place on the pass to Barnes. However, Johnson gets drawn to the action and leaves Murray-Boyles enough room to hit the three off the find from Barnes:
The Raptors break the Hawks down again as they execute a perfect slip pick-and-roll, with Murray-Boyles slipping the screen, Barret splitting the Hawks defense with the bounce-pass, and the extra pass from Murray-Boyles to find the cutting Barnes, who has a free dunk after Okongwu has to rotate to Murray-Boyles:
The Hawks trailed by as many as 15 points in the first quarter but whittled this down to five points by the end of the first quarter after a late Luke Kennard three-pointer. The Hawks kept pace with Toronto for a part of the second quarter, until the Raptors gradually eked their lead back to 16 points before taking a 14 point lead to halftime.
The third quarter saw a consistent pattern where the Raptors maintained their double-digit lead for much of the quarter, with the lead dipping below double figures only briefly.
After struggling with foul trouble in the first half, Risacher picked up his fifth foul within two minutes of the third quarter beginning. Hawks head coach Quin Snyder kept Risacher in the game, and he provided the Hawks a boost offensively, scoring nine much needed points in the quarter.
The fourth quarter saw the Hawks refuse to go away, cutting the lead down to six points before the Raptors pushed it back out to 14 point — it looked like safe lead in the fourth having held off the Atlanta push and stabilize the lead.
The Hawks were not finished yet, cutting the lead to seven points before squandering offensive possessions as the Raptors hit back-to-back threes to push the lead back to 14 with two minutes to go. The Hawks struggled to break the Raptors down defensively, and costly turnovers did not help their cause.
Alas, the game was now gone at this point, and the Hawks did not call for a timeout, instead choosing to let the clock run out with the starters on the floor as the game got away from the Hawks, falling to a 118-100 defeat and a game-high lead for the Raptors to finish the game.
Following the game, Quin Snyder was disappointed with the Hawks’ aggression and defense to begin the game, particularly with the context of the Hawks’ recent game with the Raptors and believed the Hawks should have expected Toronto’s aggressiveness. Snyder was not pleased with his side’s ball movement, alluding to it as one of the elements the Hawks have to excel at in order to win games.
“I think the biggest thing was our aggression and physicality on defense,” said Snyder. “Digging in at the beginning of the game, we shouldn’t be surprised — we played them two days ago — with how aggressive they are on both ends. We got down and that kind of rallied us and our level raised. It’s difficult when you’re playing from behind for long stretches and we had a couple of times where we could cut it to six, late. I think the final score isn’t representative of what we did in the second half. That said, the score is representative of how they played and how we played. We need to be more shifted, be more connected. We need to keep moving the ball; a lot of times I felt there were open people, and we have to find them. There’s certain things that we have to do in order to have success and we weren’t doing those things at the beginning of the game.”
While the Hawks racked up 28 assists, it doesn’t tell the full picture of the ball movement. The Hawks, at times, did not play with the extra pass and players often settled for jumpshots when they couldn’t break down the defense — Jalen Johnson in particular was guilty of this, and was scoreless in the second half on 0-of-5 shooting (finishing with just 13 points on 5-of-15 shooting from the field and 0-of-4 from three).
Johnson was, by no means, the only player to struggle shooting the ball last night. Daniels shot 4-of-13 from the field, scoring 11 points, and the Raptors played him as most teams should: stand off him from three and when he drives the ball, go for the poke-away/jam him up on drives.
Daniels did well getting to the rim, but his finesse around the basket is still in need of improvement. The same could be said about the Hawks last night as a team, who shot just under 45% at the rim — a tough percentage to shoot at the rim when they did get their chances in behind the Raptors’ perimeter defense:
The Hawks scored just 44 points in the paint, and were blown out of the water by the Raptors in this regard — 64-44 in paint points. Alexander-Walker struggled at the rim (1-of-5), and struggled to shoot in this game, scoring 14 points on 4-of-14 shooting from the field and 2-of-6 from three. Alexander-Walker was well contested as he got to his spots on jumpers, and the finishing at the rim was obviously difficult.
Elsewhere, Kristaps Porzingis struggled shooting the ball, shooting 2-of-12 from the field, but Snyder was pleased with the quality of shots that Porzingis took, even if they missed.
“Having KP back, the ball didn’t go in for him but I thought he took good shots and had an impact on the game,” said Snyder. “He’s an important player for us as well.”
Going back to the paint points/shooting at the rim, perhaps the most damning stat for the Hawks was that the Raptors shot 82% at the rim:
It’s not as though the Raptors excelled everywhere else — it’s average or far below average (aside from the corner three) but when you succeed this much at the rim, it’s very difficult to win games. Had the Raptors even hit close to league average for threes, this would have closer to a 30 point blowout. The Raptors’ drives, and good ball movement, just opened up the lane for the hosts, and the Hawks had little chance to contest at the rim if Okongwu was taken away from the play.
Okongwu had a solid game overall, scoring 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the field, 2-of-3 from three, 12 rebounds, three assists, and four steals. Luke Kennard also had a solid game off the bench, scoring 10 points and shooting 3-of-4 from three.
“Luke’s been playing well, and we saw him play well again,” said Snyder of Kennard.
Over his last five games, Kennard has been averaging 10 points a game and 55% shooting from three on 3.6 attempts per game. The momentum for Kennard has been on a positive trend lately, and with an average of three assists per game in this stretch it’s coincided with less Keaton Wallace recently.
While the passing is a bonus from Kennard — and something the Hawks need off the bench — the most encouraging number is the three-point percentage, and that continued last night even if the Hawks did not win the game.
Zaccharie Risacher had an odd game. He picked up two fouls within the first minute-and-a-half of the game, picked up his third foul just as the second quarter began, and then picked up a fourth foul after his entry pass to Porzingis was picked off by Gradey Dick, and Risacher fouled him at the rim for the ‘and-1’ in transition.
A fifth foul to begin the third quarter could have easily negatively affected Risacher on what was looking like an extremely frustrating night. Instead, Risacher’s game ignited, scoring nine points in the third and finishing with 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting — all 16 points coming in the second half.
“That’s the right word,” said Snyder when asked about Risacher’s ‘aggressiveness’ in response to his fifth foul. “You can be aggressive in a lot of ways. He threw himself into the game on the defensive end and got rewarded for it.”
To say he was ‘rewarded’ for his aggressiveness might be the wrong takeaway given how poor Risacher was at times in the first half but it was an encouraging response from Risacher in a very frustrating scenario for him in this game.
Frustration is probably the word for the Hawks last night, shooting a frustrating 39% from the field and a disappointing fourth loss to the Raptors this season — the Raptors have just had the Hawks’ number this season. In the four game series, the Raptors have won by an average of 16 points, and their point differential across these four games is +67 points — it’s not even been close.
The game itself, however, felt largely inconsequential compared to what’s going on around the Hawks at the moment. The Trae Young era is seemingly headed for an end, and until he’s traded that cloud will hang over the Hawks and any games they play until that outcome is reached.
To what degree, if any, this whole situation — now it’s become a lot more public — impacts their play on the court remains to be seen. For now, the Hawks will just be happy to be finished with the Raptors for this season.
The Hawks (17-21) head back to Atlanta to take on the New Orleans Pelicans (8-29) at State Farm Arena.
Until next time!
