The Round 2 pick — Hawks in six

Should the Hawks play for the NBA title, they should send a fruit basket to the Brooklyn Nets. The No. 8 seed did the Hawks a great favor: It made them have to play well to win.

The regular season’s final six weeks put no premium on either. The Hawks were more concerned about rest and recuperation than playing well, and they led the Eastern Conference by such a margin that winning was no issue. As much as they might have tried not to coast, coasting was inevitable.

Games 1 and 2 of Round 1 did nothing to jolt the Hawks. They didn’t play well but won anyway, and few lessons are imparted when a team’s winning. In Game 3 the Hawks played poorly and lost, but that could be written off as the moment when an underdog saves a bit of face before calling it a season. What happened next could not.

The Hawks actually played well for long stretches of Game 4, and still the No. 1 seed lost to a 38-win opponent. If this playoff run stretches into June, we’ll recall Game 4 of Round 1 as a line of demarcation. The Hawks realized that, as sweet as that 60-win season had been, the postseason was different. Lapses were no longer allowed.

The Hawks weren’t the same in Game 5. (“They were desperate,” Nets coach Lionel Hollins said.) It was their first real test of these playoffs — their first test in nearly two months — and they passed. To the Nets’ credit, they didn’t roll over. They again fought to finish, which made the Hawks’ end of the game excellence even more impressive. They had to buckle down and execute to win on a night when they might have gagged.

Game 6 was a breeze. The Nets had no more to give, and the gap between No. 1 and No. 8 was finally made manifest. When the Hawks get rolling, they’re really good. We’d forgotten that over these past few weeks. We need to remember as we look toward Round 2 — and beyond.

The Washington Wizards are where they were a year ago. Again a No. 5 seed, they again upset a respected No. 4 — Chicago last year, albeit an injured Chicago; Toronto this time — in a powerful Round 1 display. (They beat the Bulls in five games; they swept the Raptors.)

In Round 2, Washington will again be facing a No. 1 seed that wobbled in Round 1. Last year the Wizards faced Indiana, which needed to win Games 6 and 7 to outlast the Hawks, and some folks believed Washington would do what Atlanta hadn’t quite done — upset the Pacers. Sure enough, the Wizards stole Game 1 in Indianapolis and appeared on their merry way. They lost four of the next five.

Something similar should happen this spring. It would be no shock if Washington absconded with Game 1 in Philips Arena, seeing as how tipoff Sunday will come 38 1/2 hours after the Hawks ousted the Nets.

Fatalistic Hawks-watchers — are there any other kind? — recall that the only other time this team seeded No. 1 yielded the same scenario. The Hawks were stretched to a win-or-else Game 5 by Miami, which they indeed won. They opened Round 2 against rested Indiana, which had swept its opening series, two days later. They lost Game 1 here, and everything else was holding serve at home. The Pacers prevailed in six games.

As tempting as it is to say, “History will repeat,” it won’t. The Hawks are way better than Washington; they won the season’s first three meetings with disdain and lost the fourth while sitting all their starters. Granted, they were way better than Brooklyn, too, but the Nets found a way to compete come the playoffs.

Competing, however, isn’t quite winning. If it’s easy to envision the Wizards taking Game 1, it’s just as easy to envision the Hawks winning once or twice in D.C. (The Pacers won there three times last May.) Washington has some nice players and Paul Pierce is doing his talismanic thing, but Pierce, who’s 37, is about to be tethered to DeMarre Carroll.