NEW ORLEANS — The Hawks have embodied the idea of a tale of two halves through their first six games of the season.
At 4-2 following their 123-105 win over the Pelicans in New Orleans on Saturday, the Hawks have shown they have a penchant for comebacks.
The Hawks trailed the Pelicans 63-53 with 11:17 remaining in the third quarter, but went on a five-minute, 26-8 run that erased the double-digit deficit. They ended the third quarter on an 18-6 run. By the end of the third, the Hawks outscored the Pelicans 41-23, erased their 10-point deficit and took the lead for good.
“I mean as a player you feel a lot better and you thrive off of confidence,” Hawks guard Trae Young said. “And for me as a player, I know my teammates as well like when you’re you’re getting, I mean, told to shoot and given confidence all the time from your teammates, and not only your teammates, your coaches.
“I mean it just lets you go out there and play more free. I mean, nobody’s gonna play perfect. And if you do is very, very, very rare in game that you play perfect. So to be able to for us to live with mistakes from each other and pick one another up after a mistake, it’s big for us because you got to be able to make the next play because it’s a long game. We were down seven at halftime and we ended up winning by double digits. It’s a long game. So, you can’t get too high or too low in any part of the game.“
Upon their return from the locker room after halftime, the Hawks played more disciplined defense. They limited their fouls and stopped sending the Pelicans to the line, which allowed them to establish an offensive rhythm in the first half.
They communicated more, as well, deploying traps and double teams on Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, which limited the Pelicans’ biggest threats in the paint.
If the Hawks weren’t sending walls of bodies at Williamson and Ingram, they were strongly handling their one-on-one matchups. The Hawks had a strong outing from their front court in Clint Capela, De’Andre Hunter and Jalen Johnson. But coach Quin Snyder as always had plenty of shoutouts for the players on his roster.
“Well, you know, those individual matchups are really important and then the other guys on the floor impacting the game as well, where it’s not just one guy trying to take a matchup,” Snyder said.” Trae’s, pick up points being higher, I thought our bigs up at the point of the screen in pick and roll and all those things, you know, we need each other, and we need individual performances, like we had tonight from Hunt. I thought JJ, as well. But then we need Clint, coming over to help because you know, Zion just he’s a handful. We did a good job of not fouling in the second half as well.”
But the Hawks also chased the Pelicans off the 3-point, holding them to 25.8% shooting from distance and generally just making them work for every thing. The Hawks forced the Pelicans to take bad shots or run out the shot clock.
The Hawks trailed by as many as 10 points in Saturday’s victory and have erased a double-digit deficit in each of its past three games. Per Elias Sports Bureau, it’s the first time since March 3-13, 2021 that they’ve come back three straight double-digit deficits to win.
The Hawks have a first-half defensive rating of 111.8, which is good for 18th in the league. By comparison, their second-half defensive rating is 108.4, 11th in the league.
The Hawks rank third in the league in second-half offense, with an offensive rating of 125.1, which is up from 119.3 in the first half.
Of course, the would like to avoid the need to mount a second-half comeback. As they move forward they look to continue trust in each other. That’s part of what helped them to cut down on fouls in the second half on Saturday.
“Yeah, just being disciplined,” Snyder said. “You know, and sometimes it’s trusting guy behind you. Sometimes if you feel like you’re beat, it’s just a shortcut. And for playing defense, the way we want to, someone’s got your back.”
