Hawks Defeat Heat on Prince’s Career Night

The Atlanta Hawks defeated the shorthanded Miami Heat 110-104 at home, notching their 4^th win at Phillips Arena this season and improving to 7-23 overall on the year.

The Heat were without 4 major rotation players: Goran Dragic, Hassan Whiteside, James Johnson and Justice Winslow. Dragic had the night off and the other three were all nursing various injuries and ailments.

Because of their thin ranks, the Heat seemed outmatched for much of this game, though they did fight hard down the stretch and cut the lead to 4 with 3:48 left in the game, but they never got any closer than that as the 7 players who played more than 6 minutes were completely gassed by the time the game finished.

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For the away team, Josh Richardson had a game-high 26 points on 10-19 shooting with 4 boards, 3 assists, 3 steals, and a -2 box plus/minus in a game the Heat lost by 6. This was an impressive, do-everything game from Richardson, who was coming off a career-high 28 points against the Clippers on Friday.

Promising rookie Bam Adebayo had a strong game against the undersized wings and frontcourt players of the Hawks; the 13^th overall pick finished with 11 points on 3 of 6 shooting (5 of 7 from the charity stripe) and 10 rebounds, 4 of which were offensive (a stat line we’re used to seeing from John Collins).

Adebayo impressed in his 30 minutes, finishing and-1s and generally showcasing his stretchy, athletic skill set.

For the home team, the starters outperformed their counterparts to an impressive degree as all five starters had a positive box plus/minus and the 4 starters that played more than 30 minutes all finished with a BPM of +10 or more.

Taurean Prince continued an upward trend in his recent play and had one of the best game of his young career. He led the Hawks with 36 minutes, 24 points, 7 rebounds and 3 blocks and also had 3 assists and a game-high +15 BPM.

The Prince That Was Promised set the tone early as he was aggressive from beyond the arc, taking three-pointers with confidence and finishing 4 of 7 from downtown. He also had a filthy chasedown block on the galumphing Kelly Olynyk that was quite splendid:

Kent Bazemore has also experience an uptick in his play of late, and this game was no exception. Baze finished with an eye-popping stat line of 16 points (7 of 15 shooting), a game-high 7 assists, 5 rebounds, 5 steals, 2 block and a +13 BPM.

Baze was very motivated on this night, and he continues to prove his clutch credentials as he, in essence, iced the game with a tough and-1 layup with 24.1 to go in the 4^th quarter:

Dennis Schröder bounced back from a few backsliding performances in recent games and finished with 23 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and a +13 BPM. Schröd victimized poor defender Tyler Johnson on numerous occasions, blowing by him for easy layup after easy layup and forcing him to commit lots of fouls (Johnson fouled out in the game’s waning seconds).

Elsewhere among the starters, Miles Plumlee had 2 highlight-reel dunks, one of which was a truly stellar one-handed alley-oop received from Malcolm Delaney. Plumlee only played 23 minutes, but he was a +6 in BPM and he seemed to be finding his footing within Coach Bud’s system.

From the bench, only 3 players logged significant minutes as Marco Belinelli and Luke Babbitt combined for only 11 minutes but a -21 BPM. Malcolm Delaney was exhumed from bench purgatory and was actually the first guard off the bench for the Hawks on this night. He lived up to that role, scoring 11 points on 3 of 6 shooting and being opportunistic with his passing and driving.

Delaney was a steady steward handling the ball, and he was given much more leeway in this game than he has in recent bouts.

John Collins is still on a minutes restriction since returning from injury, but he continues to batter defenders and rain dunks on hapless foes with his mammoth ups and incredible hangtime, both of which were on display throughout this game:

JC finished with 9 points on 3 of 5 shooting with 6 rebounds and a +4 BPM in 17 minutes. Oh, and he also had this dunk following an offensive rebound:

They don’t call him John the Baptist for nothing.

The Hawks are off on Tuesday but return to action on Wednesday night against the Indiana Pacers on the road. Tip-off is slated for 7:30 p.m. EST.