There will come a time when the Hawks will beat the Miami Heat, and it won’t come as a shock and won’t be written off as a quirk of scheduling. That time is not yet at hand, but it isn’t as far off as you would think.
If they can get just a bit lucky, the Hawks are on track to getting really good, and by this we don’t mean good by watered-down NBA East standards. We mean good enough to win two playoff rounds. We mean good enough to play for the right to reach the NBA finals.
And no, before you ask, this glowing forecast isn’t just a product of the Hawks’ giddy MLK Day victory over the reigning champs. It’s a reflection of how well the Hawks are building under general manager Danny Ferry and now coach Mike Budenholzer. This is a smart organization — yes, you heard correctly — that soon will be more than just smart. It will be envied and emulated and feared.
To recap: Without Al Horford, their best player, the Hawks have beaten Indiana (No. 1 in the East), Houston (No. 4 in the West) and now Miami (NBA titlist twice running) in the span of 12 days. Going on available talent, the Hawks aren’t among the league’s top half. But they’re clever enough and coached well enough that, on a given night, they can hang with anybody.
On Monday, the Hawks yielded a season-worst 70 points in the first half and still led. That’s because they made the league’s most renowned roster look as if it had never practiced defensive rotations. It wasn’t until seven minutes into the third quarter that the Hawks went three consecutive possessions without scoring, and it wasn’t until 6:24 remained that they trailed. (Even then, they weren’t as far behind as they appeared. A Chris Bosh layup that preceded two LeBron James 3-pointers was, after video review, waved off as a shot-clock violation, meaning the Hawks trailed by three points, not five.)
In the interest of fairness, we need insert the requisite disclaimers. The Heat are in a lull, which can happen when you’re playing on the road — Monday’s was Miami’s 11th away game since Christmas and its sixth in succession — and when you’re biding your time until April arrives. Dwyane Wade didn’t play because of preventative knee maintenance, which tells us how seriously the Heat are taking the regular season. No matter what, they know they won’t be any worse than the No. 2 seed in the East. No matter what, they know they can’t truly defend their title until the spring.
Even James, the world’s best player, appears to be pacing himself. He didn’t take his first shot Monday until 5:18 remained in the first quarter, by which time Pero Antic, the Hawks center who’s Macedonia’s best player, had scored 10 points.
The Hawks outhustled and outplayed the Heat for 3 1/2 quarters, but Miami has made a habit of stealing games at the end. The Hawks held the line against any such thievery. They got and made better shots, which is a tribute to shooting — these Hawks can shoot with anybody — but more a sign of coaching. Four times Monday, the Hawks got layups off out-of-bounds sets, and how well you execute a called play tells us how expert the call truly was.
And finally someone stopped somebody. Paul Millsap, who was the best player on a floor that included the world’s finest, blocked a Chris Bosh layup. DeMarre Carroll made a layup — yes, another — off a Kyle Korver feed. Antic made still another layup off a Millsap pass. Korver made the clinching 3-pointer after Antic set a wicked back screen on Mario Chalmers. And then, just to prove he’s not immortal, LeBron threw the ball out of bounds.
“We wanted to be the team that got the stops,” Budenholzer said, “and holding them to two 22-point quarters (in the second) was a real positive.”
Let’s be clear. Without Horford, who’s lost for the duration, the Hawks aren’t gifted enough to beat Miami four times — or even twice — in a postseason series. What matters for now is the arc of this long-fumbling franchise. The right GM was hired in June 2012, and a year later he hired the right coach. What’s left is to find the right players, and that’s always the hard part.
Still, we’ve seen enough of Budenholzer to know that if you give him talent he’ll maximize it, and we’ve seen enough of Ferry to believe that he’s among the best at knowing what he wants in his players. (Who would have believed that Antic would go for a career-best 17 points against mighty Miami?) This team is going to be really good very soon. If it can somehow luck into a superstar, it will be better than good.
