The Atlanta Hawks have taken the series lead against the New York Knicks thanks to a dominant display on their home floor. The beauty of this game was that this was the one that Tom Thibodeau and the New York Knicks wanted to get the home-court advantage back.
The problem for the Knicks is that they did not beat the Hawks in New York thanks to playing far superior basketball. They scrapped and scraped and put in a few cheap shots. Game two, which was in New York was not pretty to watch.
As a result, this game was refereed in a manner where the Knicks were not able to scrap the game down. From the Hawks’ point of view, Kevin Huerter was assessed a flagrant foul, penalty one for a hard foul on Julius Randle.
The Atlanta Hawks benefitted from top-level defense and elite ball movement
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The Hawks have played incredible defense on Randle all series. He is averaging 14.7 points, 11.7 points, and 3.3 assists in 36.7 minutes per game. However, there are a few issues Randle is facing. He is also averaging 3.3 turnovers per game which has the impact of nullifying his assist number.
On top of that, the Hawks have kept him to 13-of-54 from the field, and 6-of-20 from deep. This is good for only 24.1 percent from the floor, and 30.0 percent from deep. The Hawks held Randle to a series worst 2-of-15 from the floor in the third game of the series.
In response, the Hawks had 28 assists on 42 made baskets. They also only had 11 turnovers for the game. A big reason for this was the spacing on the floor. Trae Young was able to penetrate and kick the ball out to his shooters which led to him getting a game-high 14 assists. The Knicks only had 14 assists as a team.
This is where ball movement and good basketball on both ends of the floor are going to win out. Now all the Hawks need to do to win the series is find a way to stop Derrick Rose.