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For the second time this week, the Atlanta Hawks squared off against the hapless Washington Wizards in front of their home fans at State Farm Arena. After beating Washington handily on Tuesday, Atlanta delivered an equally emphatic 126-96 victory last night — though with Jalen Johnson (left hip contusion) and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (left foot sprain) watching this one from the sidelines, the manner of victory looked a little different than it did on Tuesday.
The Wizards have been one of the worst teams in the NBA this season, ranking 29th in offense and 28th in defense, still, with the Play-In race in the Eastern Conference heating up, it was important that the Hawks took care of business on Thursday evening.
Corey Kispert led all scorers with a career-high 33 points on 11-for-19 shooting from the field (6-for-11 from three) against his former team, while CJ McCollum added 25 points in 26 minutes of action. Dyson Daniels had a nice night, filling up the stat sheet with 13 points, 11 assists and five steals. Jonathan Kuminga, logging his first start in a Hawks uniform, chipped in with 17 points, nine rebounds and three assists.
McCollum had it going early on, scoring eight out of Atlanta’s first 14 points as the Hawks jumped out to an early 14-2 lead. A cold spell from Atlanta saw Washington cut the lead to two, before the Hawks pulled away towards the end of the quarter — thanks in large part to Washington turning the ball over four times over the final 3:00 of the period (and Corey Kispert going nuclear).
Here, after a chaotic sequence, Daniels pokes the ball free from Jayden Hardy leading to a Kispert triple after some nice ball movement by Atlanta.
A few plays later, Landale gets a paw on the entry pass, leading to a fastbreak opportunity for Atlanta and another Kispert three ball.
On the very next possession, a wayward entry pass from Anthony Gil leads to another Daniels steal. He finds Kispert with a nice hit-ahead pass for another open triple.
Adding insult to injury, Mo Gueye capped off the quarter with a steal and slam, and Atlanta took a 37-26 lead into the second quarter.
Another defining factor in the first quarter was the frequency with which Atlanta was getting out in transition and generating quality early shot clock looks while preventing them on the other end, with the Hawks outscoring the Wizards 16-0 in fastbreak points in the opening frame.
Here, Daniels grabs the rebound, races the other way and finds Kuminga for a wide-open corner three.
In the play below, Daniels glides right by Champagnie for a pretty transition finish off of a Washington miss.
In the second, Atlanta extended their lead to 20, facing little resistance from the visiting team. While they continued to shoot the ball well from the outside (with McCollum and Kispert knocking down two three-pointers apiece), they also did a good job attacking the paint — shooting 8-for-12 from the interior in the second.
Here, Daniels goes to his trademark spin move before dropping in the floater over Bilal Coulibaly.
In the play below, Risacher gets the handoff from Okongwu, then finds him underneath the basket for two.
A few minutes later, Daniels finds McCollum cutting to the basket for a silky smooth finish at the rim.
Even Zaccharie Risacher, in the midst of a rough February shooting-wise, got in on the action, throwing down a mean lefty slam over Coulibaly in transition.
Still, while the Hawks took a commanding 76-56 lead into the halftime break, it wasn’t all perfect in the second quarter, with the team suffering a handful of defensive breakdowns towards the end of the period.
Here, Risacher gets caught in no-man’s land, leading to a Coulibaly slam. After Carrington rejects the screen, Risacher has to try and shrink the floor, ideally positioning himself by the nail so he can keep an eye on Coulibaly and play the pass to Vukcevic. Instead, he’s out of position when Carrington passes to Vukcevic, and Coulibaly loses him with a backdoor cut.
Here, Tre Johnson loses McCollum around the screen from Vukcevic. Okongwu is in good position to wall off the drive while CJ recovers, but he abandons his spot way too early (rotating onto 28% three-point shooter Tristan Vukcevic camped out on the perimeter) and Johnson takes it right to the hole for a slam with Atlanta’s rim protection out of the way.
Here, Leaky Black clears McCollum out of the way before Coulibaly beats Kuminga off the dribble, taking it to the cup for an easy two. Far too easy.
The third quarter lacked the shot-making prowess that we were treated to in the first half. Atlanta — ahead by 20 — looked quite lethargic coming out of the break, managing just 22 points on 7-for-21 shooting from the field (7-for-11 at the free-throw line), while turning the ball over seven times* in the period.
*They turned it over just twice in the first-half.
Here, after the air-ball from Risacher, Kuminga tries to thread the needle but throws it away.
A few plays later, Okongwu commits a careless turnover in the back-court leading to an easy two points for Washington, prompting Quin Snyder to call for timeout with the Wizards only trailing by 14.
Fortunately for the Hawks, Washington continued to struggle shooting the basketball in the third (10-for-28 from the field, 2-for-10 from three) and couldn’t find a way back into the ball game despite the lack of verve from Atlanta. A Kuminga-led flurry to close the quarter saw Atlanta take a 98-80 lead into the final period.
The fourth quarter was hardly competitive. Atlanta got the period started on a 6-0 run and led by 24 with just under six minutes remaining. Meanwhile, the Wizards kept up the miserable shooting (6-for-24 from the field, 0-for-9 from three) and managed just 16 points in the final frame.
When the buzzer sounded, the Hawks went home with a resounding 126-96 victory.
Searching for some overarching themes from this one, one big difference between the two sides was seen in the amount of free-throws the Hawks were able to generate, with Atlanta finishing the game with 37 free-throw attempts (29-for-37) — tied for the fourth most free throw attempts they’ve taken in a game this season — while Washington finished the game just 15-for-16 at the line.
Jonathan Kuminga, who has routinely ranked near the top of the league in shooting fouls drawn (per cleaningtheglass) over the course of his career, put a ton of pressure on the rim in this one*, tying his season-high with eight free throw attempts, converting six of them.
*Something Atlanta have desperately needed since the McCollum and Kispert additions.
Another difference was that despite these two teams ranking near the top of the league in ‘pace’, the Hawks were the only ones able to consistently generate quality early shot clock looks, outscoring Washington 24-11 in fast-break points.
Of course, it was always going to be difficult for Washington to overcome the massive shooting discrepancy (58.7% true shooting percentage (TS%) for Atlanta vs. 47.5% Washington), but the fact that they were unable to gain on edge on the glass or in the turnover margin sealed their fate.
Postgame, Quin Snyder had the following to say on how the team responded to a difficult third quarter.
“I think the way we started the third quarter. I didn’t think we defended as well, but also, we missed some shots, and that makes it harder because they were in transition. But those are the times where we’ve talked about, we just can’t give up big runs, so we did a good job responding to that. NBA games get competitive, and I was just happy with the way we defended throughout the course of the game. We’ve got to do a better job on the defensive glass, and I didn’t think we crashed the offensive glass as consistently as we need to. So, that possession game is just crucial for us, and we need everyone to do it.”
On getting out to a fast start in the first quarter, Snyder said:
“We had a couple guys shoot it well in the beginning of the game, and Corey throughout the game, but you can’t count on that all the time. You need to be able to rely on getting stops and rebounding. That’s where our focus needs to continue to go.”
On Jonathan Kuminga’s second game in a Hawks jersey:
“The thing that’s impressed me as much as anything is just, his work. You saw that previous to him getting healthy and I think that’s carried over. There are some plays defensively where his strength stands out and he’s been focused. There was a — he lost it out of bounds — but there was a big play out of a timeout. I thought we needed to dig in, [and] he did a really good job just denying the entry pass and he almost had a dunk. So that to me is more impressive than the actual dunk — I know he can dunk. So those little things on the defensive end, he can be impactful”
“Then I think he’s really focused on moving the ball and being unselfish. I thought he made a couple passes tonight that were really impressive, just looking the guy off and seeing the court, and as he plays more, he’s going to be more instinctive.”
On Corey Kispert setting his career high in points (33), and if there were any conversations about feeding him the ball to help him get there.
“We weren’t talking about his career high. I don’t think he was focused on that. We were talking about him doing a good job spacing, which is I think where a lot of his shots came early. He’s someone that we’ll run an ‘ATO’ for because, those are opportunities that you get to take a stab at a three, or if someone overplays the situation, you get high percentage shots. But I don’t think anyone was thinking about that. Frankly, I wasn’t aware of it until you just said it.”
Snyder also spoke highly of Kispert’s ‘determination’ and ‘pride’ when asked about the chase-down block he had in the third quarter, which helped snap the Hawks out of their funk.
Looking ahead, Atlanta has one more game remaining on their homestand, taking on Vit Krejci and the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday evening. Tip off for that one is at 6 PM EST.
Talk soon.