Oh, there they are.
The Hawks returned Friday night. They might’ve had some schizophrenic tendencies before they finished wiping their feet on the Brooklyn Nets — what team’s score by quarters starts 36-15-41? — but there was no mistaking the ball movement, the defense, the lack of dribbles off the feet and passes into Row 3.
They won. Easily. Where has that been?
They played a 38-win, No. 8 playoff seed like a 60-win, No. 1 seed is supposed to play an inferior opponent — like they were expected to play them the whole series. The only question now is whether the Hawks’ 111-87 win over Brooklyn — which finally dispatched the Nets in the opening-round playoff series — was some aberration or this return to form will be here for a while?
“We didn’t play too well in the first three games of this series,” Kyle Korver said. “I didn’t think we had our edge. Coming here and losing two (Games 3 and 4) kind of woke us up and we started to play better. We come out of this series playing better than we were coming in, that’s for sure.
The Hawks took six games to beat Brooklyn four times. They took four games to beat them four times during the season. Had they lost again Friday and sent this series to a Game 7, there would be serious doubts about their lifeline in the next round against Washington (assuming they even won Game 7).
But what we saw Friday night again was the great team defense that forced turnovers, keyed the fast break and led to a 23-3 run that blew the game open.
“The rope started slipping out of our hands,” Brooklyn coach Lionel Hollins said. “I called a timeout. Then I called another timeout. You could see the wave of momentum they had, and they weren’t going to let up.”
If you’re the Hawks, those words sound like a sweet song.
“When we’re a good team, whether it’s tonight or no matter how far you want to go back, it usually starts with us being good defensively,” coach Mike Budenholzer said. “We can get out and play in transition, we can get to the rim and get some open looks. We play against a defense that’s not set. Defensively, this is what we are looking for.”
When they play like this, they don’t lose many games.
When guard Jeff Teague plays like they, they also don’t lose. He managed to control the game without scoring a point. His pressure defense led his team, and he had 13 assists, two steals and only one turnover, even while going 0-for-5 from the floor.
The Hawks saw a 15-point second-quarter lead shrivel to six at 51-45. But when they returned at halftime, they channeled their inner-December and January, when they went 31-2.
They played their best quarter of the series in the third. Actually, for a team struggling to get its mojo back, it was its best quarter in several weeks. The 23-3 run on the way to a 41-point quarter, blowing it open.
The Hawks will play again Sunday — not against Brooklyn again, but against Washington, which has been resting since a surprisingly easy four-game sweep of Toronto. They went 3-1 during the season against the Wizards. Please, no assumptions.
Maybe Friday’s game marked a new beginning. But this been a maddening team to watch in the playoffs, and this game was a perfect illustration of that. They couldn’t miss a shot in the first quarter. They couldn’t make one in the second. The score was 20-10 seven minutes into the game. Teague already had five assists. It was 36-23 after 12 minutes, when the Hawks made 13 of 18 shots and had their highest scoring quarter of the series. What could possibly go wrong?
But in the second quarter, they went cold, almost on cue. They made only four of their first 15 field goals and were 8-for-23 in a 16-point quarter. They led by six (51-45) after leading by as much 15. Part of the reason for that was DeMarre Carroll, the team’s best player in this series, picked up his second and third fouls in a span of 30 seconds and sat out the final 9:55 of the half.
A couple of questions have circled the Hawks this series: 1) Why has it taken so long to dispatch Brooklyn? 2) Would this help them later in the playoffs?
As for the first question, the Nets put up a bigger fight than anybody anticipated, and the Hawks have inexplicably gone into funks every game, particularly on offense. It’s also even more apparent now than it was down the stretch of the regular season how much the team misses forward Thabo Sefolosha.
As for the second question, we’ll find out. When asked if this series has been a learning experience for his team, Budenholzer was non-committal.
“We talk about learning from challenges and learning from wins as much as losses,” he said. “That’s hopefully a characteristic of our team. To say what we’ve learned — we talk about if we have a lead, how we can sustain it, how can we do more that got us the lead, how can we respond to adversity, whether we’re in the middle of a game or in the middle of a series. Can we maintain our focus and mental toughness? Can we move on to the next play, the next game, the next run?”
They survived. They’re moving on. Maybe they learned something. We’re about to find out.
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