Atlanta Hawks: Studs and duds from frustrating loss to Wizards

Atlanta Hawks dud from frustrating loss to Wizards: The starters got outscored badly

The Hawks starters were outscored 101-78. There are two ways to look at this in general. Either the offense didn’t score enough or the defense failed to stop the other team. We’ve already touched on the latter being the case here, Every Washington starter shot over 42 percent from the floor.

Four Washington players ended up with 20-plus points each.

Atlanta allowed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to knock down 70 percent of his shots en route to his 21 points. Caldwell-Pope was averaging 8.5 points coming in. He also had eight rebounds in a game against the NBA’s second-best rebounding team.

It’s a similar story with Kyle Kuzma, though he is averaging over 13 points per game making his outburst more understandable.

The primary culprit was Bradley Beal (27/8/8) as he made clutch plays down the stretch.

Coming into the game, we figured the Hawks bench would be pivotal. They certainly underwhelmed with just 13 total points outside of Reddish. But the starters sacrificed their defense for offense.

After the game, Nate McMillan spoke of the players not letting the officiating get to them. There were several questionable calls. It seemed, however, as if that was a byproduct of the Hawks frustration on defense rather than the source of it. There were also multiple technical fouls called on Atlanta.

It’s good they figure out their weaknesses now and work on them on the way to the postseason. But they need solutions because it will be a short trip and a quick exit otherwise.