Tests revealed that DeMarre Carroll doesn’t have a tear, a break, a dislocation or any significant damage to a ligament, a bone or cartilage that might otherwise lead an orthopedist surgeon to point to an X-ray or MRI and say, “See this? That’s not good.”
So everybody in Hawks’ land exhaled Thursday.
But even if Carroll has merely a sprained left knee, as the team said — and I have a standing belief that “questionable” applies to a team’s truthfulness as much as it does a player’s actual health — the Hawks could be in trouble.
They lost the Eastern Conference finals opener to Cleveland 97-89 on Wednesday night, just as they lost the second-round series opener at home to Washington. But this feels different. Needing to win a game in D.C. to reclaim home-court advantage didn’t seem like a daunting task against the Wizards. Needing to win at least one road game in Cleveland seems like a different animal.
“We lost the first game (to Washington), came in and made adjustments,” Paul Millsap said. “We feel like we can make adjustments now that’s going to help us get over the edge. It’s not daunting.”
If that’s true, the Hawks’ well goes even deeper than anybody imagined.
Carroll seems like a long shot to play in Game 2, and if and when he returns he’ll likely be hampered by the injury. He was the Hawks’ best remaining defensive player after the late-season loss of Thabo Sefolosha, and as such was assigned LeBron James.
The Hawks lost Sefolosha to a broken leg on an off-day encounter with New York police. They lost Carroll on a game-night encounter with the Cavaliers when his knee buckled on a drive. At least he was working.
The Hawks probably would be safe in thinking that J.R. Smith can’t possibly drain eight 3-pointers again as he did for Cleveland in Game 1. He will morph back into J.R. Smith, just as Deron Williams morphed back into Deron Williams in the first round. (I’m not a big stats guy, but I like this one: Williams scored 35 with seven 3-pointers in Game 3. He scored 36 points with four 3-pointers in the other five games combined.)
But there are other issues:
- Defense: Many believed Sefolosha's absence would impact the Hawks more in this series than in the first two rounds because of their inability to rotate Carroll, Sefolosha and Kent Bazemore against James. Carroll's uncertain status raises alarms.
“We would be without our two best wing defenders. It would be tough,” Millsap said. “But it’s something we’ve done all year, we’ve adjusted. We have complete confidence in Kent. We have confidence in our team defense. If (Carroll) doesn’t play, we have to move on.”
- Three-point shooting: The Hawks are making only 33 percent of their 3-point attempts in the playoffs after going 4-for-23 (17.4) on Wednesday. They made 38 percent during the regular season. Kyle Korver's drop-off is even more pronounced. He ranked second in the league during the season at 49.2 percent, but he ranks 55th in the playoffs, at 35.6 percent.
- Millsap has had some strong moments in the postseason, but he hasn't been nearly the consistent force he was during the regular season, possibly because of a late-season shoulder injury, which may have been worse than the team has let on.
When Korver and Millsap (3-for-11) aren’t scoring, Jeff Teague feels the need to take over. There wasn’t a Cleveland defender who could stay with Teague (27 points) in Game 1, but his ability to drive and kick really pays off only when the teammates he is kicking to make jumpers — and they weren’t.
When asked specifically about some of Dennis Schroder’s wild jumpers and 2-for-10 shooting, coach Mike Budenholzer said, “Our entire group could’ve gotten better shots. Dennis isn’t any different than anybody on our team.”
Millsap was asked if there were any revelations in day-after film study.
“Be better,” he said.
Elaboration?
“Offensively we can be better. Defensively we can be better.”
It may have come off as an amusing cover for strategic changes, but the truth is there aren’t any secrets. The Hawks aren’t good enough right now. A clean MRI didn’t solve all the problems.
