The No. 1 seed that DeMarre Carroll said Sunday hadn’t been acting like a No. 1 seed issued a reminder Monday night: The Hawks are alive and, if not fully well, they’re a darn sight perkier than when the day dawned.
The Hawks won 106-101 at the Verizon Center to square Round 2 and reclaim the homecourt edge they’d ceded in losing Game 1. That’s a big deal. The Wizards will have to win again at Philips Arena to take this series, and without their best player — John Wall was injured in Game 1 — they’re probably not capable. Which means:
The Hawks, who looked disinterested for much of Saturday’s Game 3 here, are back on track to reach the Eastern Conference finals, a place they’ve never been. We’ve had 10 postseason games to pick over their flaws, and the Hawks were doing little to hide the blemishes. But here they stand.
They wobbled to the finish in Game 4. They managed nine points from the 6:45 mark of the fourth quarter to the game’s final second. They saw Paul Pierce — yep, him again — shake free for an open 3-pointer that would have tied it. This time he missed. (He’d hit a much tougher try to win Game 3. Basketball can be weird.)
This wasn’t, however, a case of justice denied. The Hawks deserved Game 4. They were the better team. We figured they were the better team coming into the series and had that notion reinforced when Wall was lost, but somehow the Hawks had fallen into a 2-1 hole that, had it become 3-1, might have been an abyss.
Moot point now, though. That sound you heard emanating southwest from the Beltway was a massive sigh of relief. Game 3 had prompted a crisis of confidence among Hawks: How was this happening? What had become of this 60-win colossus?
From the start of Game 4, the Hawks were again engaged. Even when the Wizards, who weren’t a big 3-point shooting team during the regular season, were filling it full from beyond the arc, the visitors were undeterred. Indeed, seeing Washington — which pounded the Hawks underneath in Game 3 — have to score from distance was a victory in itself.
The Wizards made 10 of 15 first-half treys and still, as the Hawks’ Paul Millsap noted afterward, “they were behind.” By 10 whole points. The Hawks maintained their working lead for most of the second half — the Wizards pulled within a point in the third quarter and within three with 36.7 seconds remaining — but this was always the visitors’ game to lose.
That the visitors didn’t can be traced to Jeff Teague, whose 3-pointer with 1:12 left was the Hawks’ only score in a stretch of six nervous possessions, and to Pierce, who saw DeMarre Carroll get tangled on a wicked Nene pick and who had a chance to, ahem, pierce the Hawks for the second time in three days. But this jumper didn’t bank home. It kicked off the rim and out of bounds. The series was square.
Kyle Korver again had a quiet night — only six points for the second consecutive game — but the Hawks turned the Wizards’ emphasis on the great shooter against them. Teague scored 26 points on 20 shots and made eight assists, and he and backup Dennis Schroder (14 points, eight assists) flitted through the gaps in Washington’s defense. The Hawks scored 48 points in the lane, only 27 on treys.
“Kind of a role reversal,” Millsap said, nodding to Washington’s 12 3-pointers.
Of the Hawks’ 41 baskets, 30 were functions of assists. They made 47.1 percent of their shots. They tried only 19 treys. (They’d averaged 31 3-point attempts over the first nine postseason games.) The offense wasn’t fully on song Monday, but it was closer than at any time in these playoffs. And the effort, which had been substandard in Game 3 until the subs took hold, was of professional caliber.
Millsap again: “That’s how we play. That’s how we’ve played the game all year.”
On Sunday, Millsap said the Hawks hadn’t been themselves in postseason. Was this, he was asked Monday, more like it?
“To me, this was the best we’ve played all series,” he said.
For all the grief they’ve gotten (and deserved), the Hawks headed home having restored order to this series. They should be OK now.
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