Atlanta Hawks steal home-court advantage with Game 1 win – Grades

Best Atlanta Hawks reserve performance:

It may not have been the best game from Danilo Gallinari but, with Young and Collins doing the heavy lifting, it didn’t need to be. Still, Gallo’s nine points led the Hawks bench and he was technically their most efficient three-point shooter, though he only hit 1-of-3 tiples so it’s not saying much.

How can a guy who scored four points get an ‘average’ grade? By giving solid supplemental minutes behind an injured Bogdanovic and Huerter. After not playing much over seven minutes in two straight, Solo pitched in 20 minutes. His ability to do a little bit of everything has been useful for Atlanta.

Lou Williams played his usual allotment of minutes in Game 1 but had his worst shooting performance of the postseason. He was 1-of-5 from the floor and, while it isn’t what he’s on the floor for, he had no assists. Williams -12 was second-worst on the team.

Take this one with a grain of salt. We were wondering if Onyeka Okongwu would see more floor time in this series after being solid in limited minutes against Philadelphia. Instead, he played just over two minutes securing just one rebound and a block.

In closing:

That’s three straight Game 1 wins for the Hawks. They undoubtedly set the tone in the previous two series and the opener of the Eastern Conference Finals would suggest it might go the same way this time. If so, this year would be the most unpredictable with the Hawks being the poster child for all of the chaos.

Because in order to reach the Finals, they will have gone through three of the four seeds above them and five All-Defensive Team members. Good luck convincing them they can’t win the whole thing. As the saying goes, believe Atlanta.