It just kept getting worse.
J.R. Smith, a castoff from the Knicks, dropped in jumpers from Neptune in the Game 1. The Hawks might have dismissed that as a once-in-a-series aberration but they couldn’t do the same with their own dreadful long-range shooting (6-for-26) in the second game because it had become a postseason norm.
DeMarre Carroll’s knee buckled. Kyle Korver’s ankle got bent sideways. Al Horford got on the wrong side of a referee. Matthew Dellavedova became an unlikely cult hero. (Hey, it’s Cleveland.) Paul Millsap was milk-carton invisible.
I haven’t even gotten to LeBron James yet.
“We should’ve taken care of home court first. It just started tumbling,” Carroll said.
Avalanche. The Hawks’ maiden voyage to the Eastern Conference finals evolved into a Groucho Marx tune: “Hello, I must be going.”
Four games. Gone.
Two days after showing the basketball world what courage and resilience look like, nearly pulling off an improbable Horford-less upset in Game 3, the Hawks all but walked themselves onto the dustpan Tuesday night.
They trailed Cleveland by 20 points in the second quarter and, well, were pretty much just counting the minutes to the offseason from that point on. A season of beauty for most of seven months ended in a dumpster fire. The Hawks lost 118-88, not that anybody was looking at the scoreboard for the last hour or two.
You can open your eyes. It’s over now.
“We had home court advantage. We should’ve take care of that first and it just started tumbling,” Carroll said. “I got hurt. Kyle got hurt.”
There was that. But really, it’s about this.
“Obviously we weren’t good enough,” coach Mike Budenholzer said when asked if his team wasn’t prepared for the moment. “We didn’t get it done in the Eastern Conference finals, but I don’t think it was the moment, per se.”
Momma said there’d be days like this. But a series like this?
The Hawks are familiar with this ending. They won 60 games in the regular season. They won two rounds of playoffs for the first time in Atlanta franchise history. But their first conference finals appearance ended the same as the last time they faced Cleveland in a playoff series. They were dumped in a second-round series in 2009. James and the Cavaliers swept them by an average margin of 18 points.
The series wasn’t that bad for the first three games. Losing margins: 8, 12, 3 (overtime). Then came the mallet on the forehead in Game 4.
Jeff Teague: “We did a lot of things (during the season) but we ended on a disappointing note.”
Understatement.
Think back: The Hawks actually led after one quarter in the first game. But they led following only two of the next 16 quarters and overtime. Never did they leave an impression that they posed a threat.
They lost bodies. They lost battles for loose balls. They lost their opponent on defense and lost sight of the rim on offense.
They tried everything, even changing uniforms. They wore basic white in Game 1, throwback white in Game 2, blue in Game 3, red in Game 4.
The problem wasn’t the laundry.
They weren’t good enough. This isn’t to suggest they didn’t belong in the Eastern Conference finals. They just played like they didn’t belong in the Eastern Conference finals.
In what would be their final game of the season, they led for exactly 20 seconds. It was 2-0 after a Teague layup. But then Kyrie Irving, who had been stashed in bubble wrap for two games, hit an eight-foot floater for two of his 11 first-half points and the Hawks chased — or at times chose not to chase — the rest of the night.
Cleveland led by 10 points just nine minutes into the game (24-14). They led by 20 midway through the second quarter (53-33). They settled for a 59-42 advantage at halftime because there was plenty of time left for second-half clowning.
The Cavaliers might as well have dropped confetti in the second quarter. It wouldn’t have affected the Hawks’ shooting. They were 5-for-32 (15.6 percent) on three-point attempts in Game 4 and 26-for-111 (23.4 percent) in the series.
Live by the three, die by the three.
But misguided jumpers were not the only thing that went wrong. The skies opened up when they reached the conference finals. Then it hailed on their heads.
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