Hawks Lose Entertaining Tilt to 76ers 101-91

The Atlanta Hawks were down by as many as 28 in the 4^th quarter, but this young team continued to fight and brought the final margin of defeat down to 10 as the Philadelphia 76ers defeated Atlanta in its return to Philips Arena.

This was a rather energetic and entertaining, though two of the biggest stars in this game – Dennis Schroöder for the Hawks and the gargantuan presence of Joel Embiid for the Sixers – were both inactive with injuries.

News came down at the start of this game that Schröd would miss the rest of the season with a grade 2 ankle sprain and Embiid collided with Markelle Fultz and fractured an orbital bone in his face in the 76ers’ prior game.

For the Sixers, near-certain Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons was able to pick up the slack left by JoJo. Simmons is a gifted offensive player and was clearly the most influential force in this game. The pace at which Simmons plays is contagious for both teams (especially a young and impressionable team like Atlanta), and he was picking the Hawks apart with difficult, precise passes through traffic – sometimes directly after a behind-the-back dribble or on a no-look.

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Simmons made it look easy on this night, and logged his 11^th triple-double of the season with 13 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists. He also had a game-best +21 box plus/minus, as the Philly starters didn’t miss a beat without their best player in Embiid.

Former Hawks Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli returned to Philips for the first time since being bought out, and Ilyasova in particular punished his former team. True to form, he drew one offensive foul and politely flopped ahead of a Dewayne Dedmon dunk, but otherwise, he clobbered his old team.

Ersan finished with 21 points and a season-high 16 rebounds. It seems Atlanta might’ve only been seeing, say, 70 percent of Ilyasova’s maximum effort, as he was all over the place on this night.

This game had some wild swings from quarter to quarter. The first quarter was tight as both teams played crisply; Philly took a three-point advantage into the 2^nd. In the 2^nd, only 31 total points were scored with Philly scoring 17 to Atlanta’s 14. Coming out of halftime, the Sixers blew it wide open and outscored Atlanta by 21, 39 to 18. However, with the starters resting, Atlanta kept it close in the 4^th with a striking 32 to 15 advantage, closing out the game with a 20-4 run. Weird.