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With the series against the Cleveland Cavaliers already over, coach Mike Budenholzer and team leader Al Horford have to be kicking themselves right now because they just missed a huge opportunity. Granted, they’ve been hit with some major injuries, but that shouldn’t affect an entire team in any NBA playoff series. The youth of the Atlanta Hawks sure shined through during this short four-game series, but here’s to hoping they learn valuable lessons for the future. The Hawks need to play their own game regardless of who their opponent is.
I understand it can be a little intimidating playing against the best player in the world in LeBron James, but you have some fire power too. It may not be as dominant, but the only thing that should matter is playing your game come playoff time. Unfortunately, Atlanta failed miserably in this area. Game 3 was great, and we should all give the Hawks major props for that close-call performance, but the games before and after that were simply embarrassing at times. The Cavaliers were honestly going to win this series anyway, but the Hawks should have at least put up a fight.
What is the best part of the Atlanta Hawks game? Fast break offense. Running up and down the court, playing in-your-face defense and running virtually no set plays on offense. You want to know what the Hawks did against the Cavs? They walked up and down the court, made them control the tempo for three of the four games, played okay defense for the most part and ran set plays at least eighty percent of the time. Not good at all.
Another big problem the Hawks had was they simply did not take advantage of mismatches. Matthew Dellavedova was very solid in this series, but you can’t tell me that Jeff Teague isn’t faster. Teague is faster off-the-dribble, faster going baseline-to-baseline, and is a much better pick-and roll-player. The Hawks got close in Game 3 because he put up thirty points, but in the other games he was simply a non-factor.
One more thing. Paul Millsap and Al Horford were invisible in this series — unless you want to talk about the ejection Horford suffered. But, one of the biggest pieces of the Hawks’ puzzle is the ability of their power forward and center to run the fast-break. I recall only two times this happened. That’s just not going to cut it against the King and his team.
If these young Hawks learn to really fly in crunch time, they have a chance to be the next San Antonio Spurs. They have that much potential. But, they have to fix these things in order to truly succeed. Stay tuned, and hopefully we don’t see any major roster changes just because they got swept by Cleveland.
Samuel Martell is Oklahoma City’s beat writer at www.RantSports.com. To stay connected, ‘follow’ him on Twitter, ‘like’ him on Facebook, or ‘add’ him to your network on Google.
