Teasing the brink of postseason humiliation, the Hawks responded with consecutive wins over the eighth-seeded Brooklyn Nets — and it took until the sixth game for them to resemble what they were supposed to look like in the first five.
Having drifted for three games against the Washington Wizards, an opponent missing its best player for the previous two but clearly not its drive, the Hawks finally located their heartbeat in Game 4. They weren’t perfect, but improved ball movement and defensive effort, with just a touch of desperation, lifted them to a win.
So that’s two games out of 10.
Something is wrong here.
This shouldn’t be taken as a declaration that the Hawks are on the verge of a playoff fizzle. It’s quite possible they’ve learned something, they’ll win the next two games, eliminate the Wizards in six and advance to the Eastern Conference finals, punching through the franchise’s invisible ceiling.
But it’s a bit disconcerting that it has taken being backed against a wall for the Hawks to respond with the kind of effort and performance they exhibited through most of a 60-22 regular season.
Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer acknowledged the obvious Tuesday, between the lines: His team can’t survive in the postseason if performance peaks remain relative cameos. Referencing the wins Monday night in Washington and Game 6 in Brooklyn, he said, “It’s important that we play that way more often, that the group has a better understanding and that we’re learning as we progress. That’s part of the process.”
The process being: understanding that these are the playoffs. Sixteen teams gets here and each one arrives with the same realization: Win 16 games, and you’re champions.
The previous six months don’t matter. The Hawks aren’t any better than anybody else. If they need reminding, just look up at the lack of banners in Philips Arena.
This team shouldn’t need to get slapped around a few times for that to slip in. There has been so much attention in the playoffs paid to Budenholzer’s substitution patterns or his team being lazy and jump-shot-happy or decoding postgame comments from the coach and DeMarre Carroll that it distracts from the overriding problem: More often than not, the Hawks haven’t played with enough effort, desire and focus to win games.
Where’s the passion on defense, the diving for loose balls, the edge that made this team so watchable and likable? Too often, the Hawks have looked soft — physically and mentally. Even when they’ve said they’re angry, they’re not believable.
This would be a good time for players to ask themselves: How do they want this year’s team to be defined?
“I think there’s nothing like going through good times and bad times, every game, every possession,” Budenholzer said. “That’s why people talk about playoff experience. That’s why people appreciate the teams and players who have more of those experiences and draw on them. We’re building that and growing that. But at the end of the day, you either get it done or you don’t. We want to be of that mindset. We want to get it done.”
They won twice less than impressively over Brooklyn at home, then lost twice on the road before feeling a need to snap out of it. They were outworked in the first three games of the series by Washington, who won twice despite first-game injuries to guards John Wall and Bradley Beal, and Wall’s absence in the next two games.
Budenholzer is right: Learning how to win in the playoffs is a process. But the Hawks aren’t exactly facing a team with a rich postseason tradition, save Game 3 hero Paul Pierce.
Now tied in this series at 2-2, they will either push the Wizards to the brink of elimination in the next game or face that situation themselves. This would be a good time to realize that being on auto pilot won’t get it done.
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