Battle-Tested Atlanta Hawks Escape 2nd Round with Cleveland Cavaliers Up Next
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As soon as the ball left Paul Pierce’s fingertips, with his Washington Wizards down 94-91 to the Atlanta Hawks and with what appeared to be milliseconds remaining in a decisive Game 6, there shouldn’t have been a doubt in anyone’s mind it was hitting nylon. That's what Pierce does.
So when the rock splashed through and the Washington fans did a perfect imitation of the Coliseum crowd after Maximus' most valiant victory, no one was surprised—including the Hawks.
“I almost had a heart attack, man," said Hawks point guard Jeff Teague, who posted 20 points and seven assists in the contest."[Pierce] just won’t give up. He just keeps fighting, man.”
But those darn clocks. They ruin everything—at least if you're the Wizards.
With only 6.4 seconds remaining for a final possession, Washington inbounded to John Wall, but the initial action didn't work. With Atlanta electing not to foul intentionally late in the game and up three, Wall flipped it to Pierce on the left side. Pierce then eurostepped—yes, eurostepped—into a short-corner three as time expired.
Except once the officials stepped over to review it, they realized the red on the backboard had already come to life while the ball was still on Pierce's nails.
No basket. Game over. Hawks win the series, 4-2.
"By the time I turned around, I see Paul Pierce shoot the ball, and I was about to cry," joked Hawks forward and leading scorer for the evening DeMarre Carroll (25 points and 10 rebounds). "I said, 'Not again!' And it went through, but the basketball gods was on our side, and they let us get through this.”
How fitting that a series as close, yet ugly, as this one would end on a replay review?
Atlanta pulled out a Game 5 win, 82-81, after an Al Horford putback with 1.9 seconds remaining in regulation. Only two games prior, Pierce banked in a game-winner at the buzzer after Washington had let go of a 21-point lead.
But now it's on to the Eastern Conference Finals for Atlanta to face the Cleveland Cavaliers. It's the Hawks' first time winning two consecutive postseason series since they were the world champion St. Louis Hawks in 1958.
“I think the city really deserved this, and they needed this,” said Carroll.
Finally, the Hawks are where we all expected them to go.
After a dream season—60 wins, a Coach of the Year win, the best record in the conference by seven games—you'd think it was all rainbows, gumdrops and sugar plum fairies in Atlanta. But there are far more menacing mice running around the Hawks' living room than we may have thought back in January, when they were owners of a 19-game winning streak and didn't seem like they'd ever lose.
After running the lead up to as many as 14 during Game 6 against the Wizards, the Hawks couldn't seem to maintain it. A bench which had contributed so much for the first 82 games of the year continued its struggling postseason ways.
“I think as you get deeper into a series, you get into a situation where you have an opportunity to close out a game," said Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer. "Also, with two days between now and the next game, you can go with your starters a little bit more."
Atlanta subscribes to the San Antonio Spurs' model of rest. Actually, it may be even more extreme than that. But Friday night, every Hawks starter played between 36 and 40 minutes. Dennis Schroder (nine points, four assists) was the only reserve to pick the splinters out of his shorts and run on the court for more than 12 minutes.
A series of mini-runs, led by the incomparably tough John Wall—playing his second straight game with five broken bones in his left hand—brought Washington all the way back. The Wizards even took an 88-87 lead with under four minutes to go in regulation. But it didn't last long.
A silky jumper from Millsap. Then, two cutting layups from Carroll.
Even an untimely turnover on a sloppy inbounds pass from Kyle Korver wasn't enough to give away Atlanta's lead one more time—thanks to that clock, of course—though Washington would likely blame its uncharacteristic-for-the-playoffs shooting performance over all else for the loss.
“I thought we had some really good looks. I mean, Atanta’s good," Wizards coach Randy Wittman said. "The last two games, we struggled not overall shooting, because sometimes, it is the defense. But our open looks, we didn’t knock in.
The Wizards made just 36.6 percent of their shots from the field while converting on a poor 4-of-18 from three. More than half of those long-range attempts came in the final period when Washington was trying to erase the Hawks' lead.
“I think our bigs’ presence at the rim, Al Horford blocking shots and Paul [Millsap] at the rim. Paul just making plays everywhere. I just thought it was a great team effort,” Budenholzer said of his team's defensive performance.
Another series. Another win for the Hawks. It sounds to be all good news. But it's not.
After clinching the best record in the conference so long ago, the postseason version of Atlanta has developed an awful habit of playing with its food before finishing off its dishes. The Hawks lost twice before dismantling the Brooklyn Nets in Game 6 of their first-round series. They fell victim to a similar mindset against the 46-win Wizards, though Washington transformed its offense and competitiveness in the playoffs.
Fork around with LeBron James in the conference finals, though, and he'll jump off the plate to eat you before you can ever stick a knife in him.
Atlanta predicated its regular-season attack around ball movement, player movement and the shooting it produced from performing both of those aspects. But Korver (1-of-8 from the field Friday, 0-of-7 from three), the man who might be the NBA's most threatening catch-and-shoot assassin, has gone cold. He sank only 28.6 percent of his triples in the six games against Washington. The rest of the offense has followed.
Washington, though, has an upper-echelon defense, one which finished fifth in points allowed per possession during the regular season. Could this just be one bad series against the Nets followed by a particularly uncomfortable matchup against a hot Wizards opponent, one who can match the Hawks' speed with its own size?
Or is Atlanta not actually as dominant as a 60-22 record would imply? Does a 7-8 finish to the regular season take on some amount of meaning when paired with a sluggish start to the playoffs?
The team isn't executing in the same fashion. Those two late layups from Carroll were perfect examples of what we saw from Atlanta during the regular season: beautiful pick-and-roll action followed by effective and intelligent off-ball cutting around it. But that kind of play has become the unfortunate exception in May.
Mostly though, the Hawks aren't hitting the same shots they did during the first 82 games of the year.
Korver, who hit 50.3 percent of his catch-and-shoot threes during the regular season, has only drained 35.1 percent of such shots during the postseason, per NBA.com's SportVU data. However, a tip of the hat has to go to the young Bradley Beal for the way the Wizards shooting guard defended one of the league's scariest off-ball cutters all series.
But even the open shots aren't going into the hoop. Korver is shooting a full 13.9 percentage points worse on open threes (SportVU defines open as four feet of room or more) than he did during the regular season. The playoff Hawks, as a team, are also shooting far worse on open field-goal attempts. It leads you to ask, how sustainable was all of this when it was working so seamlessly?
Still, after all the struggles and all the missed shots, the Hawks are exactly where they're supposed to be, similarly to last year's No. 1 seed Indiana Pacers, who stumbled into the playoffs only to sleepwalk to the Eastern Conference Finals.
That Pacers team lost to LeBron's Miami Heat. This year, the man who's been to the NBA Finals four years in a row dons a different jersey, but he still stands as the biggest obstacle to the conference's top-seeded team.
The Hawks have personified doubt for basketball fans, experts, analysts, whomever all postseason. Now taking the role as the underdog against a Cavs team they were seven games better than during the regular season, they'll have to continue to prove that they're for real.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of May 16 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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