Hawks Bench Powers 113-99 Win over Wizards

In a surprisingly entertaining tilt at Phillips Arena, the Atlanta Hawks toughed out a gutsy win by beating the visiting Washington Wizards 113-99. This marks the first time the Hawks have won back-to-back games this season.

Though Washington led for a large portion of this game, the Hawks were able to rally on multiple occasions and eventually took the lead for good in a decisive 4^th quarter in which the Hawks outscored the visiting Wiz 35 to 23.

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Overall, the Hawks thoroughly outplayed the Wizards from a team standpoint as they logged more offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, made three-pointers and made field goals.

Despite the Hawks’ statistical superiority, this game’s outcome was very much in the balance coming out of halftime, as the Wizards were clutching onto a two-point advantage going into the 3^rd quarter.

A sloppy start to the second half saw both teams’ starters commit sloppy fouls, lose hideous turnovers (including, hilariously, back-to-back plays in which a player stepped out-of-bounds then came inbounds and gained possession) and play with a general malaise, which led to the turning point – the Hawks bench turning the game around with their effort and hustle late in the 3^rd and the start of the 4^th.

Marco Belinelli, as has been the case all season, led the charge for the Hawks off the bench – logging 19 points on 7 of 11 shooting (2 of 3 from downtown) in only 20 minutes of action.

Belinelli was slicing up the Wizards’ defense early, using imaginative off-ball movement and sneaky back-cuts to get wide-open layups, and this sterling offensive play led to Belinelli having the highest box plus/minus in the game at a stratospheric +22 (again, all in only 20 minutes of playing time).

https://twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/946182885643395077

John Collins also had a strong game off the bench, though he didn’t up his scoring totals for the season by only putting in 8 points on 4 of 7 shooting. Collins’s presence, however, is often enough to change the timbre of the Hawks’ offense, as the threat of his sprightly finishing and springy athleticism is something teams will have to game-plan for going forward.

John the Baptist finished with 8 rebounds to go along with his 8 points, as well as 3 blocks (one of which was an brutal erasure on a John Wall layup attempt) and 2 assists, good for an immense +18 BPM. JC affected this game in a big way, and it would’ve been nice to see him close this one out for the Hawks, as he only finished with 23 minutes of play. If he had stayed in longer, we might’ve seen more dunks like this:

The second-highest box plus/minus on the team belonged to Malcolm Delaney at +21. Though he didn’t have his strongest shooting night after showing out in recent games (7 points on 2 of 8 shooting, 1 of 5 from three-point range), Delaney affected the game in other ways by finishing with 3 steals and generally outhustling the lackadaisical Wizards.

Tyler Cavanaugh (+8 BPM) did not scratch from the field (0 points on 0 of 4 shooting, 0 of 3 from downtown), but the newly minted permanent Hawks big man did continue his impressive glasswork, and once again outhustled the seemingly bored Wizards to the tune of 7 rebounds, 3 of which were offensive.

Even though the starters for the home team were not the major difference-makers in this game, their effort must be commended as all five finished with double figures in scoring, led by team MVP through 30 games Dennis Schröder and Ersan Ilyasova.

Dennis Schröder, who usually has a tough time against the Wizards’ John Wall, flipped the script and outplayed the Wizards star to the tune of a stellar stat line: 21 points (on 7 of 15 shooting), 7 assists, 4 rebounds, 1 steal, a +10 BPM in a team-high 32 minutes of action.

Schröder let the game come to him on this night and was generally making the best play at every opportunity, whether it was finding the open man for a half-court alley-oop or slashing to the rim for his trademark layups (or dropping to the floor to help steal an inbounds pass late):

Ersan Ilyasova continued his strong play of late with a 20-point masterclass in opportunistic bucket-getting. Ilyasova seemed to find himself in the right place at the right time on many occasions, finishing tough layups and and-1s and even drilling a step-back three-pointer late in the 4^th quarter to fundamentally seal the victory:

The Turkish Delight also grabbed 9 rebounds, 4 of which were offensive, and finished as a +6 in BPM.

Taurean Prince looked good early, as he nailed a beautiful, high-arching three and stole the ball right out of John Wall’s hands after it was inbounded, but he chilled considerably after that – finishing with 11 points (that early three-point make was his only made three of the game), 9 rebounds (an astonishing 6 of which were offensive), 2 blocks and a steal in 31 minutes.

Rounding out the starters were Kent Bazemore (11 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds, 1 block, -7 BPM) and Miles Plumlee (11 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, -9 BPM), who both had strong statistical nights, but were overshadowed by the epochal, effortful performance from the Hawks bench, which completely transformed this game.

The Hawks are off tomorrow, but return to action on Friday against the Toronto Raptors at 7:30 p.m. EST.