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Thursday, February 19, 2009
Quantity over quality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fret over the way it looks all you want.
But keep in mind. In the NBA, winning basketball games is always about quantity over quality.
The Hawks barely won in Sacramento Wednesday night, escaping a decimated Kings team with a 105-100 win at Arco Arena, their first on that floor since 2000.
If you think any of the Hawks were disappointed because they barely beat the NBA’s worst team (11-44), think again.
They’re 1-1 on their toughest road trip of the season. Yet all I could think of is what they could have done better (like most of you, I see too many holes in the way they play to feel secure about where they are right now).
It took a wake up call from someone totally removed from the NBA to shake me back to reality.
“They won right,” Wifey said via text message. “So what’s the big deal? What are you complaining about?”
Exactly.
The Hawks (32-22) have won three of their last four games, four of their last five on the road and remain 10 games above .500 heading to Portland for a Friday night showdown against the Blazers.
And the way the Hawks were bludgeoned Tuesday night in Los Angles, just the fact that they bounced back for their 32nd win of the season (five shy of last season’s win total) is a statement in itself.
“I was happy with our troops down the stretch because we made the plays on defense that we needed to make,” Hawks coach Mike Woodson said after the game. “We just played last night and started the third quarter awful. It was a big concern for us to respond and our guys came out and made the plays coming out. That was big for us.”
Hawks captain and All-Star Joe Johnson was the last man out of the locker room at Staples Center Tuesday night. He called the Kings game a “must-win.” Luckily for him and the rest of the Hawks, Mike Bibby and Al Horford treated it as such.
Bibby was lights out, scoring 29 points against his former team and earning his first win against his former mates. He made himself comfortable early, scoring 12 points in the first quarter and 10 more in the third, when the Hawks overcame a halftime deficit to take lead 83-77 going into he fourth quarter. He made four 3-pointers, have five rebounds, four assists and three steals (one huge one late in the game on Beno Udrih, the man the Kings replaced him with, to help the seal the win for the Hawks.
Horford piled up 18 points and 18 rebounds, his eighth double double of the season (and for the record, the Hawks are 8-0 in those games). He was a man among boys, establishing his presence early on and maintained a dominant position throughout. No, he didn’t have to contend with a veteran big man like Brad Miller, who was traded earlier to Chicago along with John Salmons. But that speaks to the quantity over quality argument made above. He got 18 and 18. It wouldn’t matter if he did it against South Atlanta High, he got 18 and 18 when his team needed it most.
So it took a little more heavy lifting than expected to defeat the Kings, and the Hawks earned surpassed last season’s road win total with the win. The Hawks are still in the process of becoming a team that wins at a high clip. That means they’re not always going to make things as easy as they should be.
“We tend to make games we should win tough for us at the end,” Johnson said. “We have to try and grow out of that. We are trying to be one of the top teams in the [Eastern Conference]. We had to come out and show a lot of character and a lot of growth.”
