Paul Millsap was his steady self while scoring 21 points and the bench was superb as the Hawks returned to winning, yet the residue of Atlanta’s 114-86 rout of the Nets was gummed up with a prickly question at the season’s mid-point.
What is so different about this team than last year’s squad that the Hawks (24-17) might find a win over Brooklyn (11-30) to be cause for celebration?
Atlanta, after all, snapped a four-game losing streak to sub-500 teams. The Hawks shot lights out nearly from start to finish, making 44-of-70 (55.7 percent), but that merely brought up the stink of losses earlier this week at Charlotte and Milwaukee — the No. 12 and 13 teams in the East when the week began.
Not even head coach Mike Budenholzer has an answer that you’d take to the bank.
“We’re working on it,” he said. “If we knew the answer, like if it was in a pill or something, we’d take it.”
The Nets scored the first seven points of the second half to tie the game at 55, but the Hawks went nuts from there with big help from their bench as Dennis Schroder turned in his first double-double of the season with 15 points and 10 assists.
So why hasn’t this been happening more?
There are a few tangible explanations for slippage. Kyle Korver (1-of-6, 0-of-4 on 3-pointers) hasn’t been the 3-point sniper he was before a pair of offseason surgeries. Yet while DeMarre Carroll departed in free agency, Kent Bazemore (15 points, three rebounds, three assists, one steal) has been more than adequate as his stead; he’s leading Atlanta in 3-point shooting percentage (41.9).
The East is, as Budenholzer said, better, but so demonstrably that the Hawks should be so far off the pace that made them No. 1 in the East last year?
One night after losing in overtime to the Bucks, Atlanta’s energy was three dimensional. Where is the juice other nights?
Schroder doesn’t have the answers, either.
“I don’t know,” he said when asked about the Hawks’ inconsistencies. “Sometimes, it’s hard to play [against sub-.500 teams].”
Here are the key players and five observations on the game:
Three key players
Millsap: The Hawks' most consistent player scored at least 18 points for the 11th straight game on 8-of-13 shooting. He went over 10,000 career points Saturday, and has averaged 20.4 points in that span.
Schroder: Beyond his double-double, he added five rebounds and three steals. He was +29.
Tim Hardaway: Still on a run after rarely playing over the season's first two months, he scored eight points while dishing out three assists and threw down the dunk of the night on a fourth-quarter breakaway.
Five observations
1. Awake and alert
After back-to-back games where the Hawks looked as if they’d all slept poorly on the road, they were at home and on it in the first half — especially offensively. Millsap and Kent Bazemore scored 10 points each and Atlanta hit 55 percent on the way to a 55-48 lead.
2.There are two ends to the court
The Nets opened the second half on a 7-0 run to tie it up, prompting Budenholzer to call a timeout. The culprit? Defense. Brooklyn hit its first three shots after intermission.
3. Bench beatdown
Schroder’s double-double wasn’t the only highlight from Atlanta’s subs. Thabo Sefolosha was especially active in the first quarter and in the mix, chiefly on defense. His seven points, five rebounds, two blocked shots and steal don’t fairly account for his impact. The Hawks’ bench outscored Brooklyn’s 53-31, and whipped up on the boards, 23-15. Tiago Splitter went for 10 points and five rebounds. “When we play like this, the starting five, the bench contributing, it’s beautiful basketball,” Sefolosha said. “We’ll win a lot of games like that.”
4. The Nets stink
Brooklyn is not good. That’s not the only reason the owner wants to sell the team, but this group is differently a “sell.” They’re so mismatched and devoid of plan as to be given away. “What I told [Brooklyn players] is I want to see a bit more fight in them,” said Nets coach Tony Brown. “I can sit there and talk to them all day, but you have to reach deep down if you want it. I thought tonight we kind of let go of the rope a little bit.”
5. Still, the Hawks did what they’re supposed to
And it’s been quite a while since that could be said of them playing a sub-.500 team.Their last win of that sort was three weeks earlier, Dec. 26 against the Knicks. Former Georgia Tech star Thaddeus Young scored 18 points for the Nets, but leading scorer Brook Lopez was held to 10, barely over half his season average. Atlanta registered 34 assists, outscored the Nets 64-30 in the paint, 20-2 on fastbreak points, and turned 17 Brooklyn turnovers into 23 points.
“It always feels good to win, especially with the tribulations we’ve had here of late,” Bazemore said after making 6-of-9 shots. “What the future holds for us [is positive if] we continue to go out every night expecting to win.”
With the season half way down, the Hawks are searching for that magic “C” pill.
“The word that probably keeps coming up is consistency, or lack of consistency,” Budenholzer said. “We’d like to be better, and I think we’ve shown at times that we can be a very good team. Cleveland’s got a little separation and the rest of us are all in a pack and we keep talking about wanting to be that team that can break from that pack.”
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