Since 2006, every Eastern Conference representative in the NBA finals has been the team with LeBron James (six times) or the team that beat his team (three times). As the 2016 tournament commences, that’s again the only story on this side of the bracket: Can anybody east of Oakland/San Antonio take down LeBron?
For the local franchise, that issue became more pressing with Wednesday’s weird loss to the Wizards, who sat four starters and fired coach Randy Wittman the next day. Had the Hawks won, they’d have faced Miami, a stronger-on-paper Round 1 opponent, but they’d have been on Toronto’s side of the grid.
I know, I know. This could be cart-before-the-horse stuff. The Hawks are no lock to beat Boston. Of ESPN’s NBA experts, 10 picked the Hawks to win; 10 also picked them to lose. That’s no great surprise: A 4-versus-5 series is, by definition, a coin flip. But if these Hawks don’t survive Round 1, their Year After will have been an utter flop.
They slid from 60-22 to 48-34, from the East’s No. 1 seed to No. 4, from winning the Southeast Division by 14 games to finishing in a three-way tie for first and losing the tiebreaker because they crashed in D.C. for no earthly reason. (If they were trying to tank to miss the Heat in Round 1, why did four starters work at least 27 minutes? And wouldn’t the greater urgency have been to avoid Cleveland until the Eastern finals?)
In recent weeks, it has become fashionable to say the Hawks have found themselves. (After losing to Golden State on Feb. 22, they were 31-27 and no longer a playoff certainty.) Consecutive home victories over Toronto and Boston — two of the season’s best wins, not that there were many to choose among — left them in Position A to repeat as Southeast Division champs. Then they lost at Cleveland and in D.C. and wound up facing Boston, which is the kind of Round 1 opponent established teams hate.
The Celtics aren’t overly gifted — on skill, this series is a mismatch — but they play very hard and can do significant damage via Small Ball. (Ask the Warriors if that sort of thing can work.) It’s a young team (no contributor over 28) with a precocious coach (Brad Stevens, who looks 19 but is 39).
The Celtics made the playoffs last season and were swept by Cleveland, but not before Kelly Olynyk dislocated Kevin Love’s shoulder. Just because they aren’t tall — they’re one of the few teams over which the Hawks tower — doesn’t mean they’re puny. Small forward Jae Crowder weighs 235 pounds and once was Villa Rica High’s quarterback. Power forward Jared Sullinger weighs 260. Backup guard Marcus Smart weighs 220. They will, as the saying goes, get after it. They’re tied for fourth in defensive efficiency. (The Hawks rank second.)
If tangible advantages exist in what should be a hairbreadth series, it’s that the Hawks have more reliable ways to score — pace and space and Paul Millsap — and that a Game 7 would be staged here. But they cannot allow Boston’s verve to turn them into counterpunchers, as happened in all three playoff series last season. They have to hit first and hardest.
After Friday’s practice, the Hawks insisted they were better prepared for these playoffs than a year ago, when Mike Budenholzer’s attempt to rest guys down the stretch succeeded only in dulling his team’s January/February edge.“We have been playing meaningful games,” Budenholzer said, perhaps overlooking that his group was 0-2 in meaningful games this week. “We think we’re in a good place.”
They’d better be. The greatest regular season in Atlanta Hawks annals went splat against Cleveland last May. Only if they get to face LeBron’s crew again will they have the chance to make something of a Year After that, to date, has amounted to not very much.
