No surprise injured starters return for Hawks

Josh Smith wasn’t surprised that all three of his injured teammates decided to play in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals Saturday night.

In fact, he would have been stunned if they hadn’t.

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Curtis Compton/ccompton@ajc.com

Hawks forward Josh Smith had a dozen points by halftime.

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“All three of those guys have worked too hard to not be out there,” Smith said of Joe Johnson, Al Horford and Marvin Williams. “If this was a regular-season situation, all three of them would probably have been held out. But this is the playoffs, man. It’s do-or-die time. We all know it. They knew it. And they weren’t going to let us go out there without them.”

Hawks coach Mike Woodson didn’t know until just before tipoff if all three would play, but he was hopeful that they would all suit up.

“When your season is on the line you do whatever you have to do to get out there,” Woodson said. “Those guys are warriors, all three of them. Nothing surprises me at this point with players and their competitive nature.”

Putting up a fight

For a team plagued with injuries and early foul trouble regarding both Smith and Mo Evans, the Hawks didn’t back down after trailing by as many as nine points in the first quarter Saturday night.

With Smith and Evans on the bench with two fouls each, the Hawks staged a mini-rally and cut the Cavaliers’ lead to just a point, 19-18, in the final minute of the quarter.

LeBron James quieted that rally with a 25-footer over Johnson with 2.4 seconds to play.

But the Hawks came kept coming in the second quarter, taking a 28-24 lead on a Flip Murray 3-pointer with 9:51 to play.

Rough start

Smith, the Hawks’ leading scorer in the playoffs coming entering Saturday’s game, had a particularly rough start shooting the ball. He missed all three of his first-quarter attempts. All three were layups.

He also missed two of his four free throws in his first eight minutes of play. But he responded by making his next two shots from the floor, a layup and a banked jump shot from the left wing, his first shot of that variety in some time.

Etc.

Woodson said he didn’t have to resort to any fire-and-brimstone speeches before the game. Instead, he reminded his team that whenever they had faced a little adversity this season, they responded by playing some of their best and most intense basketball of the season. … Former Hawks general manager Billy Knight was on hand for Saturday’s game. Knight watched the game from a luxury suite alongside his replacement, Rick Sund. Knight said it was his first time attending a Hawks game since their Game 7 loss to Boston in last year’s first-round series. Knight resigned two days after that game.