Kyle Korver was succinct in his summation of the Hawks’ two-game road trip that leads into the All-Star break.
“We need to win,” Korver said.
The Hawks are mired in a season-long three-game losing streak, two of those losses coming at home. The Hawks lost three straight two other times this season.
Following games at the Bulls and Raptors on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Hawks can rest. But the task at hand is to right a ship before the team slips further in the standings against two opponents sharing the same space.
The Hawks spent much of the season in third place in the Eastern Conference. But entering Monday’s NBA schedule, they are fourth, a half-game behind the Raptors. Just a half-game behind the Hawks lurk the Wizards and Bulls. The Nets, after a dreadful start to the season, are just two games behind the Hawks.
“We don’t want to have a five-game slide going into the break,” Korver said. “I think we’ve played pretty well up to this point and you want to finish strong. We have to keep on playing with energy. We have to find ways to score. We’ve got to keep on defending.”
The Hawks first travel to the unfriendly confines of Chicago’s United Center. They have lost three straight to the Bulls and five in a row in Chicago. That includes a 91-84 defeat on Jan. 4. At least Luol Deng, who was one of three Bulls with a double-double in the game last month, has since been traded to the Cavaliers.
The Hawks held significant leads in the last two losses, including a 14-point margin the first quarter of Saturday’s defeat to the Grizzlies. They started the game playing with the pace and defensive activity that coach Mike Budenholzer has preached all season. Two days of video review of the loss revealed many of the same things that have plagued the Hawks all season.
“It’s interesting, it’s like every film session that we do,” Budenholzer said. “There is good stuff that we want to build on and there are things that we need to improve significantly. I think the thing we are talking about is when we are active and when we are really competing defensively, that is when we are at our best.
“Going into these last couple games (before the break), we want to focus on being active and really competing. That is not anything that different than what we have been talking about all year.”
The Hawks have been inconsistent in the win-loss columns. In addition to the three three-game losing streaks, they have a season-best win streak of only three games.
“We go through periods of time where we don’t execute that well,” Korver said. “We have to execute well to score. We are not the most talented team. When we work our system, we’ve shown we can score. We get a lot of assists. But we can’t go through these lulls where we are just playing and not really executing. We’ve seen that over and over (on video) the last couple of days.”
The Hawks return from the All-Star break to play at the Pacers, who have the NBA’s best record.
Martin likely to re-sign: The first 10-day contract of Cartier Martin expires Tuesday. The small forward will likely be re-signed to a second 10-day contract, which would be announced Tuesday. He was scheduled to travel with the team to Chicago.
Martin appeared in 25 games for the Hawks to start the season, but was released in January prior to his contract being guaranteed. After playing out two 10-day contracts with the Bulls, the Hawks brought Martin back Feb. 1. He appeared in two games since re-signing with a combined 13 points and three rebounds in games against the Pacers and Grizzlies.
The second 10-day contract would expire Feb. 20, the NBA trade deadline. The Hawks would have to sign Martin for the remainder of the season or cut ties with him.
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