When an NBA team wins 60 games in the regular season, there is a natural tendency to overlook its liabilities and focus on all of the things it does well. So it follows that when the Hawks were stampeding through the league this season there wasn’t a lot of talk about the team being too small at center.
But in many games, like every one in this playoff series against Brooklyn, the team is too small at center.
Al Horford is a great player, all 6-foot-10, 250 pounds of him. If he wasn’t a great player, he wouldn’t be a three-time All-Star, and if he wasn’t a leader he wouldn’t have been kept while Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Marvin Williams and the remains of Tracy McGrady were sent out the door.
But Horford has struggled in this first-round series against the Nets and their center, Brook Lopez, all 7-foot, 275 pounds of him.
In three games, Horford has 31 points (10.3 average), 31 rebounds and is shooting only 35.9 percent (14 for 39). His production has been dwarfed by that of Lopez: 59 points (19.7), 34 rebounds and 52.5-percent shooting (21 for 30).
It wouldn’t be surprising if Horford has been worn down at the defensive end and that has been affecting him offensively, but he didn’t acknowledge that.
“I’m not sure — we’ve played these guys before and I’ve had some success offensively,” said Horford, who averaged 17.8 points and six rebounds in four regular season games against Brooklyn. “I’ve been battling bigger guys all year. He’s a big physical guy but I’ve been OK.”
He needs to be better than he was Saturday, when Brooklyn narrowed the Hawks’ series lead to 2-1 with a 91-83 win at Barclays Center. Lopez went for 22 points and 13 rebounds. Horford finished with only seven points on 3-of-12 shooting.
“We just need to play to our strengths and use our quickness,” Horford said. “We’ve been doing this all year and we feel comfortable playing this way. I just have to make some adjustments, make sure I give (Lopez) some different looks defensively and make him work at the other end, making sure I get him as far away from the paint as I can to make his catches tougher, which I’ve tried to do.”
This will continue to be a periodic issue at both ends of the court as long as the Hawks start Horford at center and not power forward, where he seems better suited. But obviously they don’t have another starting center option, although Mike Muscala has showed potential.
Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer isn’t going to suggest in anyway that the Hawks are at a disadvantage in the middle because that would go against the coaching gene. There is a positive side and a rationalization for everything.
“I don’t know if it’s the glass half-full thing, but I think it’s actually a advantage to us,” he said. “The way Al moves and the way he can impact a game, there’s the potential for him to neutralize what the bigger guys can do, to some degree, with denying their catches, making it difficult for them.”
So he wouldn’t move Horford to power forward if there was a viable option at center?
“I’ve always said I would take any good players, and if they’re bigger, we’ll take them and use them,” he said.
Nice escape.
Budenholzer said the Hawks need to do a better job offensively, making Lopez “guard multiple actions and make him guard away from the basket, and then get us going to the basket after he has been moved a little bit. … Al and our bigs can spread them out. But we’ve got to go out and do that.”
Budenholzer and Horford spoke privately on the bench for a few minutes following Sunday’s practice at a gym near the team’s hotel. Horford said, “I don’t think Bud would want me to tell you,” the nature of the conversation but the coach shared a bit.
“We just talked about how we can move him around and how we can move the defense,” Budenholzer said. “It’s stuff we’ve been doing the whole year. Bottom line, we just have to go play. When we do that, we’re kind of free and we play with pace and that’s when we’re at our best.”
The Hawks are hopeful the adjustments help, because Horford can’t grow two inches on an off day.
