Hawks can end road slide in Boston

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By Ken Sugiura

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ORLANDO – Hawks coach Mike Woodson doesn't have any secrets about winning on the road. To him, it's pretty simple.

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"When you go out on the road, I've always said, you've got to play perfect basketball," Hawks coach Mike Woodson says as the team ends its two-game road trip in Boston on Monday.

John Raoux, AP "When you go out on the road, I've always said, you've got to play perfect basketball," Hawks coach Mike Woodson says as the team ends its two-game road trip in Boston on Monday.

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"When you go out on the road, I've always said, you've got to play perfect basketball," he said Sunday. "Especially the top teams. You're not going to go in there and beat top teams playing the way we played last night. It just doesn't work like that."

After a strong start on the road this season, the Hawks have had that lesson dumped on their heads repeatedly of late. After getting kicked up and down the court by Orlando on Saturday, the Hawks have lost three in a row on the road and five of their last seven.

Monday, they will be in Boston to try to stop that streak against a Celtics team surely smarting from its Friday loss to the Hawks at Philips Arena.

"We're going to see these teams enough throughout the season where one game's not necessarily going to define where we're at in the East," forward Marvin Williams said after the team's Sunday morning practice at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. "I think the biggest thing is we need to compete. We played super hard the other night against Boston and came out with a great win and then come back [Saturday] night and don't even compete at all."

Orlando, desperate to stop its four-game losing streak, piled up 22 fast-break points, scored 44 points in the paint and didn't even really need much from center Dwight Howard, who was stuck most of the game in foul trouble.

Meanwhile, the Hawks retreated from the Magic's onslaught, sticking to jump shots rather than attacking the basket, a strategy that has trapped them several times in the past. They scored 30 points in the paint and eight on fast breaks in the 113-81 loss, their worst loss of the season.

"We always want to stay aggressive. We want to go in the paint and score," said center Al Horford, who led the Hawks with 14 points. "Every chance I got, that's what I tried to do, but I only got so many touches."

It was the same type of indifference that doomed the Hawks against Miami last Monday and at Denver Dec. 23. In all three, the Hawks were swamped by teams trying to stop losing streaks. That doesn't completely explain losing by 17 points or more in each, though. (Other recent road losses were to Chicago in overtime Dec. 19, and Dec. 30 to Cleveland, the 106-101 loss that the Hawks are protesting.)

"There's no excuse for getting beat by 30 by a team that, when you played them the first time, you had down 11 [actually 12] at halftime," Woodson said. "You can say they've got your number and all that. I don't look at it that way. There's no excuse."

All is not quite lost. The Hawks are capable of winning on the road, as they showed in ending their nine-game losing streak in Boston in November, and stealing a win out of Dallas in December. They are 9-9 on the road, matching Woodson's goal to go .500 away from Philips Arena. As Woodson often says, they are a team still learning how to win.

Clearly, matching the intensity of top teams on the road is a skill the Hawks are still trying to master.

"The bottom line is, we'll see this team [Orlando] at least two more times, and I'd like to think we'll be better down the road when we see them," Woodson said. "But right now, the Celtics are next on the list."

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