30-plus points from Young, Johnson can’t lift Hawks past Bulls

Hawks suffer third straight loss to fall to .500 on season.

The Hawks lost their third straight game on Sunday at State Farm Arena to the Chicago Bulls, 152-150. Jalen Johnson had 36 points to lead all scorers, while Trae Young added 35 points. (Colin Hubbard/AP)

By Lauren Williams

3 hours ago

The Hawks needed to win on Sunday afternoon. But they fell 152-150 at State Farm Arena.

After dropping their last two games, the Hawks needed to execute their game plan. But the Hawks had too much slippage throughout the game that allowed the Bulls to hold their lead down to the final seconds of the game.

“I think the first half we had a lot of breakdown from an execution standpoint,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “Both teams shot it well, obviously. We just have to do more to try to impact that percentage. The shots aren’t quite as clean. Thought we did a better job with that in the second half, as far as making them work harder.”

Quick stats: The Hawks had four players finish with 20 or more points, including Jalen Johnson (36), Trae Young (35), Onyeka Okongwu (23) and Vit Krejci (20).

The Bulls’ Matas Buzelis finished with 28 points after not missing a shot until 8:55 remained in the game. Buzelis ended the day 10-of-11 from the floor.

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Turning point

After trailing the Bulls by eight points with four minutes to play in the game, the Hawks scratched away at their deficit, pulling to within 143-142 with 1:29 to play.

But the Hawks left Josh Giddey open at the top of the key for a 3 before Nikola Vucevic picked off an interior pass and pushed it ahead to Isaac Okoro for a running layup, plus a foul.

Despite Bulls guard Coby White splitting a pair of free throws to put Bulls up seven, Young and Johnson hit clutch 3-pointers that gave the Hawks a chance with 4.9 seconds to play.

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Highlight play

The Hawks haven’t had the best defensive track record as of late. It was far from perfect on Sunday, with Hawks allowing nine different players on the Bulls to finish in double figures. But the Hawks had a few standout moments, especially with Mouhamed Gueye on the court.

With 4:13 to play, the Bulls’ Ayo Dosunmu cut to the basket for a dunk. But Gueye rotated over from corner and met Dosunmu at the rim.

What they said

“We got to figure out how to stop teams that can only play fast, beating us this way. They’ve had a number of number last couple years playing this type of way. And we got to figure out how to stop the next game.” -- Young on what he saw from such a high-scoring game from both teams.

“Transition defense. It’s kind of tough winning games when you gave up 80 points in the first half. It’s kind of embarrassing, in a sense. So we just gotta get better soon. We got two days off. Hopefully cut down some of the things they were doing.” -- Johnson on what led to a high-scoring game.

“I think honestly, like after it happened, and it was Dus (John Dusel, Hawks head athletic trainer) put it back. It was actually not that bad, because I had obviously a lot of adrenaline, so it was actually not that bad. But once I sat down and, kind of calmed down, that’s when it started to really hurt.” -- Krejci, on dislocating his finger during the game.