The Hawks have lost their first two games of this season. So, moving forward, the team looks to have better execution.
The Hawks fell behind early in Friday night’s home opener against the Knicks, dropping to a 10-point deficit by the tail end of the first quarter. But a dunk by Jalen Johnson seemingly reenergized the team, kicking off a 17-7 run that tied the score at 35-35 with 10:54 left in the first half.
The Hawks moved the ball, making quick and decisive plays that forced the Knicks to work on the defensive end. As the first quarter wound down, the Hawks generated plays off of their defense.
With 2:20 to play in the first, Knicks forward Julius Randle tried to isolate Jalen Johnson, but the third-year forward yielded little space, and Randle’s midrange jumper hit iron. Sophomore wing AJ Griffin got the rebound and passed to Trae Young, who raced down court to attack the basket. When he made contact with a defender in the paint, he quickly kicked the ball out to Griffin for a 3.
The Hawks forced Immanuel Quickley to miss a corner 3, and they got back quickly and Young drove low before delivering a baseline pass to Bogdanovic for a corner 3.
A backdoor cut from Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo only slightly slowed the Hawks because Young made a pull-up 3 on the other end to pull the Hawks within 30-29.
That would be the rhythm of the game for the Hawks on Friday, when they would commit to playing the way they wanted before losing focus. The Knicks would capitalize, and the Hawks would fall behind once again.
“I think you can point to a lot of things,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “Kind of the umbrella I guess for me is just our lack of execution in a lot of different situations. Things that I know that we’ve talked about, we’ve worked on, and we’ve got to be more focused in the course of the game, and we got to communicate to one another in order to do those things, and you know, it wasn’t just one or two things.
“It was a number of things, and still, we put ourselves in a position where we have a chance to win. I was obviously happy with the way we battled back in the fourth quarter. But we made too many mistakes relative to execution of the game plan, contesting the shot. When we did some of those things, we saw some success, and it’s just, as I said, it’s a question of doing them all the time.”
The Hawks committed 17 turnovers Friday, which the Knicks used to score 24 points.
Though the Hawks shot the ball better than they did in their season-opening loss to the Hornets on Wednesday, they still gave up 20 3-pointers. Knicks guard Jalen Brunson made a regular-season career-high eight 3-pointers.
“I mean, there’s some when you’re in help situations that guys are going to get some looks,” Snyder said. “But regarding the ball, we have our hands down. Just simple things like that, where we have to have the discipline to ... and there’s stretches when we started doing it, and it was helpful. They’ll still make some of them, but you have to do everything you can to make that shot harder.
“I think our guys are aware of that. It’s not something that they’re not aware of, know that we need to change and want you know that. Again, execution is a funny thing. So you’re not always able to do it. The other team sometimes makes it hard. But again, it has to be in the front of your mind and you have to be focused on doing.”
Hawks guard Trae Young, who had 18 points and 12 assists but six turnovers, echoed Snyder and took much of the team’s first two losses upon himself.
He pointed to better execution in the first 36 minutes of the game needed to help them to avoid late-game situations where they have to dig themselves out of a hole. The Hawks pulled themselves within one or two possessions of winning Friday’s game several times in the fourth quarter.
In the final six minutes, the two teams traded buckets back and forth and in the final 30 seconds they strung together consecutive stops that put them on the cusp of taking the lead for the first time since 8:17 in the first quarter.
But Knicks center Mitchell Robinson got a piece of a lob from Young to Clint Capela, and the Hawks center never quite got control of the ball and it hit the backboard.
“I mean, it’s it’s tough,” Young said. “I mean, you obviously want to win every game. But if we played better throughout the first three quarters, we wouldn’t have been in that position anyway. So you can’t focus only on the last couple of possessions because there’s a lot of other possessions before that led up to that and put us in that position.”
Young acknowledged that every possession counts, of course. But he made it clear that he and the team need to take care of every one of them that leads up to the final moments of a game.
So, as he moves forward, Young said he has to be better in every area of his game. He added that as the team continues to get reps in under Snyder, its offense will improve and in turn, the team’s defense will get better.
“I feel like our offense is affecting our defense right now, to be honest with you,” he said. “I think our defense has been really good. But in times our offense maybe it’s sometimes I go up and I won’t get the call and I should have lay up and I’ll be under the basket and they’re on the 5-on-4 that way.
“So, that doesn’t put our team in a good position. So for me I got to do better in those positions and I will. I’ll help my teammates out. And us as a group, we just got to continue to trust this process, and we’ll be all right, I believe.”
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