Atlanta Hawks Game Preview: April 7th at Cleveland Cavaliers

The Atlanta Hawks fight for their playoff lives Friday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Can they knock off the Eastern Conference’s best team?

The Atlanta Hawks surprised everyone Thursday night by knocking off the hated Boston Celtics. They were actually quite dominant, beating Boston 123-116 at Philips Arena. It was Atlanta’s first victory of the season in their green and blue retro jerseys. Those uniforms are too gorgeous to go an an entire season without a win. The sartorial gods were instrumental in securing that win.

Atlanta’s offense broke out of their recent slump during the win.  The Hawks shot 49.4 percent from the field and 47.8 percent from three-point range. Paul Millsap led the way coming off the bench. Millsap finished with 26 points, 12 rebounds, and four assists on 8-for-15 shooting.

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Tim Hardaway Jr. added 23 points, while Dennis Schroder finished with 18 points and five assists. Taurean Prince‘s 20 points in 41 minutes was the highlight of the night for many fans. He continues to look like an outstanding prospect.

Atlanta’s defense was fantastic, especially in the first half. They held Boston to 41.1 percent shooting and 34.9 percent from three. Marcus Smart‘s five three-pointers and Isaiah Thomas‘ 35 points were not enough to help Boston on their comeback mission.

It was a game the Hawks had to have. Their schedule to close the season is brutal. Every win they can accumulate over this period helps their goal of reaching the playoffs.

With four games left to play, Atlanta has a two game lead over the ninth place Miami Heat. The Hawks are currently fifth, but the Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls, and Indiana Pacers are all within striking distance.

Atlanta’s road to the playoffs doesn’t get any easier. Tonight they’ll travel to Cleveland to take on LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. In fact, their next two games come against Cleveland. Mike Budenholzer will not be sending the schedule makers a Christmas card.

The Cavs have had a weird season. It seems like LeBron James only has weird seasons these days. His dominance has made him and his teams magnets for criticism. No matter how much they win, it just isn’t good enough for some pundits. One would think that three NBA Championships would silence the nonsense. Oh well. Some people will never be satisfied.

Despite all the noise about how they don’t play defense, or how LeBron is slipping, the Cavaliers enter into tonight’s game with a 51-27 record. They have a 1.5 game lead over the recently vanquished Celtics. They also hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Boston, so it seems like they’ll be the top seed in the Eastern Conference when the regular season ends.

That’s not to say they aren’t flawed. This is definitely a flawed team. Injuries and poor defense have led to some less than stellar stretches this season. The Cavs rank 21st in the NBA in defensive rating. They allow 110.1 points per 100 possessions.

That’s not typically something you see with championship contenders. Usually title contenders have a top ten defensive rating and a top ten offensive rating. The Cavs are only an elite offensive team.

They boast the third best offensive rating in the NBA, scoring 114 points per 100 possessions. As you might expect, the Cavaliers take and make plenty of three-pointers. They attempt 37.5 threes per night and make 38.7 percent of those attempts (second best in the league). The Hawks learned that the hard way in early March.

LeBron remains their alpha. James is having a tremendous season, averaging 26.3 points, 8.6 rebounds, and 8.7 assists per game on 54.5 percent shooting and 36.2 percent from three-point distance. James remains the best basketball player in the world as he nears his mid 30’s.

Kyrie Irving is his trusty sidekick. Irving is averaging 25 points per game on 47 percent shooting and 39.5 percent from deep. The third member of Cleveland’s tricycle is Kevin Love. Love has been injured for parts of the season, but is averaging 19.1 points and 11 rebounds per game on 43 percent shooting and 38 percent from outside.

Kyle Korver and Channing Frye are both shooting over 40 percent from three-point range, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert have been a little better than league average from three, and the addition of Deron Williams has given them yet another reliable scorer on the perimeter. Scoring is never an issue for this squad.

As you can tell, Cleveland is tough to beat. Of course, the Hawks have already beaten them this season. The season series is 1-1 entering tonight’s third meeting. The Hawks won the first meeting of the season back on Nov. 8.

Cleveland won round two on March 3. That night the Cavs set a single game NBA record with 25 three-pointers. LeBron James made six of them, Kyrie Irving made five, and former Hawk Kyle Korver made three.

James finished with 38 points, while Irving finished with 43 points. Overall, Cleveland shot 25-for-46 from three-point distance. They shot 54.7 percent from the field.

Atlanta shot 53.8 percent from the floor and 38.5 percent from deep. A furious fourth quarter comeback kept the game from being a blowout, but Atlanta came up short. The Cavs won 135-130.

The Cavaliers are the better team, but Atlanta has proven they can play with Cleveland this season. These two might get sick of each other by the end of the weekend. On Sunday, they’ll finish out their season series in Atlanta.

The Hawks started to breakout of their end of season slump last night against the Celtics, but the Cavaliers are a different animal. I think Cleveland will take this game rather easily.

UPDATE: Tonight could get really ugly. 

Next: Struggling Through Mediocrity

Who: Atlanta Hawks (40-38) @ Cleveland Cavaliers (51-27)

When: 7:30 PM EST, Friday, April 7th, 2017

Where: Quicken Loans Arena 

How: Fox Sports Southeast 

Prediction: Cavaliers 109 Hawks 90