Atlanta Hawks: 3 Takeaways From Blowout Win Over OKC

The Atlanta Hawks crushed the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night, hanging 142 points on the league’s best defense.

Tuesday night was a big game for the Atlanta Hawks. Coming off of a tough loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, Lloyd Pierce’s group was looking to rebound with a solid effort at home, and they did just that.

The Oklahoma City Thunder have the best defensive rating in the league but could do little to contain the one-for-all, all-for-one Hawks offense. Atlanta racked up an assist on a whopping 64.3% of their baskets, picking apart the aggressive Thunder defense.

Head coach Billy Donovan had the Thunder switching on defense to keep the Hawks shooters in front of them, however this caused many mismatches, especially in the post.

While the Hawks can execute the fastbreak well, patiently seeking out the mismatches down low really helped them establish their offense early.

But once the Thunder were mindful of the mismatches, they got sloppy in their “kickout” switches and other methods of getting a bigger player to cover up a mismatch. In layman’s terms, the Hawks early dominance inside for lots of scrambling on defense from OKC.

And there it was, the Atlanta Hawks—in the 2018-19 regular season—scoring 142 on a scorching hot 62.2% from the field. Here are some takeaways from Tuesday night’s thrilling victory.