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Thursday, January 15, 2009
While you were sleeping
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HAWKSVILLE - Don’t blame the Hawks for taking out their recent frustrations on the lowly Los Angeles Clippers Wednesday night.
Every other team in the NBA has done the same this season.
The Hawks snapped their four-game losing streak Wednesday night at Staples Center with a 97-80 win and handed the Clippers their 12th straight loss.
As ugly as the win might have seemed, it had to be therapeutic for the Hawks. After a solid week of losing, they needed something good to happen.
And the Clippers showed up on the schedule just in time.
“The last couple of nights we haven’t the Atlanta Hawks,” Flip Murray said after a sizzling 17-point effort off the bench - he outscored the Clippers’ bench by seven. “We’ve been coming out flat. Tonight we wanted to get off to a good start and try to get a win from there.”
The good start didn’t happen (the Hawks shot 29 percent in the first quarter and led 15-12 after one). But the Hawks did lead this one from wire to wire. And they got solid efforts from the bench as well as a much-maligned starting unit that hadn’t carried its usual load since last Wednesday’s loss to Orlando.
“Even though we didn’t have a good start, we had to go out and take advantage,” Joe Johnson said after breaking out a recent shooting slump to score 21 points on 8-for-17 shooting. “We have to start talking and getting back to the fundamentals that we focused on in the beginning of the year.”
The win keeps the Hawks (23-15) a half game ahead of the Pistons, losers in Indiana Wednesday night, for the fourth spot in the Eastern Conference playoff chase.
“It’s huge because it keeps us right where we want to be in the standings,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said. “That’s critical. If we’re still talking about trying to win 50 games and hosting a first round series and playing on the Philips arena floor, we have to hold on to that fourth spot.”
Take that
Josh Smith shut me up for the second straight game with one of his best efforts of the season against the Clippers.
Instead of his usual array of jumpers from all over the floor, Smith decided to attack the Clippers in the lane and it paid off handsomely for the Hawks’ high-flying power forward.
Smith finished his night with a game-high 26 points on 8-for-15 shooting, adding a team-high eight rebounds to go with it.
Even more important, Smith kept Hawks coach Mike Woodson off his back by playing the way Woodson’s been asking him to play since the season opener, when Smith’s dominant defensive play fueled the Hawks’ win over the Magic in Orlando.
“I don’t want to take his game away from him,” Woodson said of his preference that Smith work from the inside out as opposed to the outside in. “But I want him to play within our team in terms of being effective for us. He played strong going both ways for us and I think that showed in the final score. He was excellent. He just played a well-rounded game on both ends of the floor for us.”
Communication 101
Woodson and the players were all talking about their improved communication on the floor leading to some pretty obvious gains in their overall performance.
“I thought we communicated and only got burned a few times when we didn’t communicate. For the most part we were right on the money with our defense.”
The last time the Hawks held an opposing team 80 or less was before Christmas, an 85-78 win over Detroit on Nov. 21 at Philips Arena.
INSTANT CLASSIC … NOT!
The start of Wednesday’s game didn’t make anyone think they were in store for an instant classic. Neither team got off to a great start (the Hawks shot 1-for-7 and the Clippers 2-for-9). And those struggles continued throughout the first quarter, as the Hawks shot 29 percent to the Clippers’ 20. The Hawks took a lead at the end of the first at just 15-12.
