At such a deflating moment, perspective is a slippery eel. Should we fault the Hawks for blowing a winnable series, or should we step back and marvel that the series, for the No. 8 seed, was ever winnable?
Answers: Yes and yes.
The Hawks could have beaten the Indiana Pacers, a No. 1 seed ripe for the felling. They wasted late leads at Philips Arena in Games 4 and 6; winning either would have obviated the need for Game 7. And the trouble with Game 7 on the road is that … well, it’s Game 7 on the road, and you have to be really good to win one of those.
The Hawks aren’t yet really good. They pushed Indiana to the wall because they presented a matchup nightmare, but here again those lost leads in Atlanta proved their undoing. The longer a series goes, the longer the more talented team has to figure things out. The Hawks allowed the Pacers to cogitate so long that even Roy Hibbert, a forlorn hope for six games, was a factor in Game 7.
Only six days ago, the Hawks led the Pacers by 30 on this court en route to an emphatic Game 5 victory, but six days in the crucible of playoff basketball can be an eon. Indiana’s Frank Vogel had two days before Game 6 to conjure a smaller lineup — as the folks in Naptown said, “Finally!” — and it sort of worked. And then the Pacers weren’t the only team facing elimination.
Just as the Hawks let opportunity slip late in Game 6, they squandered early chances here Saturday. They could bank only four points off seven Indiana first-quarter turnovers, and what should have been a flying start got grounded. The Pacers led by one after the first quarter, and in the second they did something they hadn’t done in any first half this series — they achieved separation.
“That first quarter, I don’t know if ‘frustration’ was the right word,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “It was encouraging and frustrating at the same time. I felt like we had a lot of open looks. We just didn’t convert them at a high-enough rate.”
Having been put under what Mike Krzyzewski calls “game pressure,” the Hawks began to falter. They missed their final 10 shots of the half. Six of the 10 were by Paul Millsap and Jeff Teague, who were the Hawks’ best players over six games. (And all season, come to think.) Millsap had an especially rough ride, going 0-for-9 from the field.
The half ended with Teague driving and rising for a dunk, but backup center Ian Mahinmi blocked it. The Hawks trailed 47-36 at the break. They would draw no closer than seven points thereafter. Their capacity to make the occasional 3-pointer kept this from devolving into a rout — the final score was 92-80 — but Game 7, like Game 6 before it, underscored the hoops axiom that those who live by the trey can also perish by it.
The Hawks made 39.8 percent of their 3-pointers over the first five games, which is great shooting. They made 25.3 percent in Games 6 and 7, which is how you lose a winnable series. That can happen when a smaller team wearies from trying to run away from bigger and stronger defenders. Tired legs make for missed jump shots. It wasn’t that the quality of the Hawks’ 3-point tries took a sharp decline. Only the results did.
Asked if fatigue might have reared its head in Games 6 and 7, Budenholzer said: “You can never be sure. It’s probably a combination (of being tired and simply missing). I did think we got a good number of good looks.”
By game’s end, the Pacers looked so powerful that it was hard to recall that they trailed by double figures in each of the first six games. Hibbert, who didn’t score in Games 5 or 6, finished with 13 points, seven rebounds and five blocks. Paul George, whose step and a half onto the Philips Arena floor during a Game 6 fracas briefly put his Game 7 status in question, torched Kyle Korver for 30 points.
It took the Pacers 15 days and seven games, but they finally got a handle on the eighth-seeded Hawks. They made scorers such as Korver and Millsap and Teague have to work at the other end. And the Hawks, who came within three minutes of a historic upset and a Round 2 with Washington, were left to ponder how far they had come — and how far they have to go.
“The context for me is that we did a lot of things to put ourselves in position for Game 7,” Budenholzer said, but this Game 7, on the road against an opponent that was grateful still to be playing, was a bridge too far.
That they came so close is a credit to them. That they wasted such a chance is a big red debit.
