Prince’s 30-Point Masterpiece Not Enough as Hawks Fall to Raptors

In a game that was controlled in near totality by the Toronto Raptors at home, the Atlanta Hawks showed a lot of spirit and even cut the lead to single digits on two occasions late in the 4^th quarter. In the end, a lack of size overall and too many second chance points given up to that size downed the Hawks at the Air Canada Centre.

While the Hawks were only outrebounded overall 51 to 48, their offensive glasswork (19 to 14) left a lot to be desired as the away team was either too small inside (Jonas Valanciunas, Jakob Poeltl and even Lucas Nogueira combined for a whopping 12 OREBS) or too slow (Delon Wright and Norman Powell skied in for long OREBS on numerous occasions, combining for 4).

Besting Toronto at home was always going to be a long shot for the 9-25 Hawks, as the Raptors were a league-best 12-1 on their home floor going into this game, but the Hawks shot themselves in the foot with costly, ugly turnovers.

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As has been the case many times this season, the Hawks starters were thoroughly outplayed with one very notable exception – both by the Raptors starters and with what looked to be a world-beating bench unit.

Dennis Schröder, Kent Bazemore, Miles Plumlee and Ersan Ilyasova combined for 14 of the Hawks’ 18 turnovers and all were varying degrees of bad.

Schröder hiked up 14 points on 6 of 20 shooting with 9 assists, 5 rebounds and 3 turnovers with a -9 box plus/minus. Kent Bazemore was booting the ball all over the gym (and on at least one occasion, I mean that literally) and finished with 8 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists and 5 turnovers. Miles Plumlee only played 18 minutes but had a -14 BPM with 6 points, 6 rebounds and 3 turnovers. Plumlee was getting victimized by both larger players (Valanciunas, Poeltl) and faster players (Derozan, Lowry, Powell) on both ends of the floor in one of his worst games of the season.

The lone bright spot for the Hawks, who was indeed blindingly incandescent on this night, was Taurean Prince. The Prince that was Promised had the best night of his young career, going off for a game-high and career-high 30 points on a scalding-hot 12 of 16 shooting from the field – including an automatic 5 of 6 from beyond the arc.

Taurean also notched 10 rebounds in his 34 minutes of action, and the Hawks were almost powerless offensively without him on the floor. This excellent performance made Prince the youngest Hawk since Josh Smith in 2009 to notch a 30 and 10 stat line.

TP was truly breathtaking on offense, as his shot looked beautiful from downtown and he was hitting extremely difficult, driving midrange shots and tough, contested layups with ease. With a great showing like this, Taurean looks ready to shoulder more of the offensive load going forward. If he can play to this level on a consistent basis, the Hawks would be wise to allow that.

Off the bench, exciting rookie John Collins notched 11 points, but his stellar field goal percentage took a hit, as the size and defensive intensity of the Raptors front line stunted Collins’s finishing ability to the tune of a 3 of 8 shooting night from the field. Still though, 11 points, 8 rebounds and a game-high 4 blocks in only 20 minutes of play is pretty darn good.

Honestly, Collins could’ve played more minutes in this one just to see if he could break off an astonishing dunk or two against the Raptors’ menacing frontcourt. In general, it would serve the Hawks to feed Collins more so the 19^th overall pick can work on his offensive moves.

John the Baptist showed a brief flash of his floor game in the 4^th when he took a Raptor off the dribble with a spin move, then attempted a reverse layup, which drew a foul call. It was a tantalizing play, and Collins certainly has the athleticism to make things happen when he has the ball in his hands.

Toronto had many stellar performers, which you would expect in a game that was almost a wire-to-wire victory for the home team. Though DeMar Derozan shut the door late on the Hawks with some clutch buckets, it was starting center Jonas Valanciunas who was feasting on the Hawks’ relatively soft interior defense early in the game – using his superior bulk to bully smaller players with ease.

The story for the Raptors was not their starters, however. The Raptors’ second unit came in and caught the Hawks completely unawares with their speed, energy and defensive acumen.  Pascal Siakam, Delon Wright, Fred VanVleet and Jakob Poeltl all had double-digit box plus/minuses, and those numbers were relatively representative of their stellar performances.

Throughout the majority of this game, everything the Raptors did turned to gold, while the Hawks were left with a bucket of bismuth.

The Hawks return home tomorrow night for a home tilt against the Portland Trail Blazers at 7:30 p.m. EST.

A few late notes:

*Mike Muscala and DeAndre’ Bembry were both sent to the Hawks’ G-League affiliate after the game against the Wizards on Wednesday, so neither were available to play on.

*Dewayne Dedmon was dressed and active for this game, but did not play. It was nice to see him in his warm-ups, though.

*Raptors head coach Dwane Casey and Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer exchanged some pleasantries late in the 4^th quarter after OG Anunoby slammed home a dunk, and Bud challenged OG on it. Casey came to his player’s aid, and both coaches could be seen yelling “F**k you!” at each other after the final whistle blew. The Hawks’ Twitter feed had no idea how prescient this tweet would be: