The Good and Bad from Atlanta Hawks’ Loss to Cleveland

Finding the good and bad from the Atlanta Hawks’ matchup with Cleveland.

The Atlanta Hawks faced off with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night, falling to 4-2 on the season with a 96-91 loss. Atlanta blew a 15-point lead in the contest, falling apart on both ends of the court on the second night of a back-to-back.

Not only did the team stop making shots, but they also showed little effort on defense and if the Cavaliers didn’t struggle themselves, the Hawks would have lost by much more than five points.

Let’s break down the rest of the contest by breaking into the good and bad of the game.

The Good:

• The first quarter

The Hawks came out the gates firing, looking the stellar offensive team they’ve been the rest of the season. They scored 35 in the frame, jumping out to an early double-digit lead. Things carried into the second quarter a bit, but the first quarter was the only period in which they looked like the team we saw against Brooklyn. For context, they scored 35 points in the entire second half.

• De’Andre Hunter

Another good game for Hunter, coming less than 24 hours after his breakout performance in Brooklyn. He, like the rest of the team, tapered off after a hot start but still finished with 17 points and turned in a few highlight plays.

The Bad:

• Fourth-quarter offense

It’s not just that the Hawks weren’t making shots. The sets they were running were uninspired and lazily ran. Most of their possessions came down to an isolation shot late in the shot clock and as mentioned, the shot wasn’t falling when they did get a good look.

• Lloyd Pierce

This ties into the previous note, as coaching has to get some blame, for poorly designed offensive sets. But Pierce also grossly mismanaged the third quarter. He left the starters on the bench for entirely too long (the same issue occurred in the Hawks’ only other loss on the year) and has to get some blame for the Hawks simply looking like an undisciplined squad in the second half.

• Turnovers

Turnovers killed the Hawks in each of the previous three seasons, a bad habit they looked to be breaking early this season. Tonight they turned it over 20 times, leading to 17 Cleveland points. Not a winning formula.

• Free throws

Atlanta came into the game shooting 85.1 percent from the free-throw line. That number is about to go way down after going 10-of-19 from the stripe tonight. Clint Capela was especially bad, going 0-for-5.

The Atlanta Hawks will look to rebound on Monday when the Knicks come to Atlanta.