‘We got fried tonight’: Wizards down Hawks with hot shooting

WASHINGTON -- The Wizards stunned, frustrated and left the Hawks scrambling from the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting between the teams.

They looked unstoppable, opening the night shooting 8-of-8 from 3, on their way to a 45-point first quarter. The Hawks never recovered, handing the Wizards a 132-113 win and just their second victory of the season.

“When the score runs up and quickly, it’s really difficult and also important to kind of stay focused on what you’re doing and I think at that point, we started having more breakdowns,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “We did everything to try to McCollum. Trapped him, changed a few coverages. It really wasn’t about that. I just thought we lost our focus defensively in the you know, we cut it to 13, but we couldn’t sustain that. And, give them credit.”

The Hawks’ hopes for a return to the next stage of the NBA Cup came to an end, as the Hawks pulled their veteran players with 6:39 still remaining in the game, down 125-99.

Quick stats: Hawks center Onyeka Okongwu led the Hawks in scoring for much of Tuesday night with 20 points. Center Kristaps Porzingis scored 22 points and had eight rebounds.

Wizards guard CJ McCollum scored 46 points on 10-of-13 shooting from 3.

Turning point

The Hawks never seemed to have it.

Less than four minutes into the game, the Hawks called a timeout after Wizard CJ McCollum hit a third straight 3. The Hawks in turn, had made just 1-of-7 overall, while spotting the Wizards 4-of-5 shooting overall.

The Hawks then challenged an out-of-bounds call that ended up being unsuccessful. Corey Kispert followed with a wide-open 3 before McCollum sank his fourth of the game.

Everything seemed to fall the Wizards’ way, while the Hawks missed some key rotations and were slow on close out.

Highlight play

The Hawks had very little to celebrate on Tuesday. But Hawks forward Jalen Johnson made a highlight-worthy block in the second quarter as the team rallied and got the game to within 13.

Wizards guard Bub Carrington took a pass from the corner and drove baseline. He went up in the air, cocked his arm back, looking to slam down the one-handed dunk.

But Johnson met him at the rim and stuffed the dunk attempt.

What they said

“It’s tough. When they start a game like that, 8-of-8 from 3 at some point or something, your defensive coverage is set as a team to rotate for each other. And once people start getting off like that, you kind of have to be close to them, pay more attention to them, and that’s when other things start to open up. And that’s what happened.

“They exploited (Alex) Sarr on the roll because we were hugged up to CJ and (Corey) Kispert a little more. But yeah, we got fried tonight. I mean, they were hitting everything. I thought to start the game, we got good looks. They just didn’t fall. And they fell for them. So we’re kind of playing catch-up the whole time. And yeah, we had too many breakdowns tonight. But credit to them. They made shots, they made plays. So, we got to learn from this. But we’ve got to scrap it quick and move on to the next one.” -- Dyson Daniels on the mental battle of trying to stop the Wizards.

“When they start making everything it’s hard, like you get discouraged so easily, then you play great defense 24 seconds, and the last second they make a shot. It’s hard. So just kind of flush it off and focus on the next one and just do what we do next time we play defense, we pride ourselves on that, just from the jump. Just show them we’re here.” -- Mouhamed Gueye on how the Hawks communicate better when taking the ball out of the net.