What a fall from grace it has been for the Atlanta Hawks (17-25) this season. After making a sneak attack on the East and reaching the Eastern Conference Finals, they find themselves sitting 12th in the conference and mired in a five-game skid, their second losing streak of at least as many games this season.
There is a very real chance they could match that previous slide with the Milwaukee Bucks on tap for Monday.
The Bucks were the team to ultimately end the Hawks impressive season, sending them home in six games en route to an NBA championship. Most would have said there is no shame in losing to the champs and been encouraged by the campaign.
Atlanta brass, like the rest of the final four, banked on the same group improving.
The Atlanta Hawks have slid further than any other team that made last year’s Conference Finals
A 117-108 loss to the New York Knicks on Saturday gives them the regular-season series and means the Hawks will go at least 55 days between wins on their home floor. They are 0-10 at State Farm Arena in that span. We talked about how they’ve missed the mark on this preseason goal in our progress report.
They are two games below their expected record based on strength-of-schedule so far.
How, though, do they look when framed against their Conference Finals brethren, all of which have dealt with some level of adversity this season?
Milwaukee is fourth in the East entering play on Sunday at 27-18. But they will enter the game on Monday having lost their last outing 103-96 to the Toronto Raptors and having dropped five of their last seven.
Jrue Holiday has been out for the last five games as the Bucks have gone 2-3 and that is just the most recent of the Bucks injury woes this season; they haven’t had Brook Lopez since early December (for one game) and went 4-5 without Giannis Antetokounmpo. They haven’t come close to the number of absences as the Hawks but the misses at the top have been greater.
All of their starters have missed at least seven games already this season and the bench has come up short as they did against the Raptors far too often.
Hawks will need to go 24-16 in their final 40 games just to go .500 on the season.
— Mike Conti (@MikeConti929) January 16, 2022
The Western Conference Finalists have had to deal with varying levels of adversity with the Phoenix Suns shaking off a contract dispute with De’Andre Ayton to sit atop the West at 33-9 while the Los Angeles Clippers sit eighth at 22-23.
Ayton has missed 14 games this season but the Suns still went 11-3. Devin Booker missed seven games with a pulled hammy. Phoenix went 5-2 without him and 4-2 without Jae Crowder thanks to Chris Paul and Mikal Bridges being rocks and playing in all 41 of the Suns games so far this season.
The Clippers haven’t had Kahwi Leonard all season after he injured himself in Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Utah Jazz. They lost Paul George just before Christmas and have gone 4-8 since. L.A. was fifth in the West at the time.
Even without George and Leonard, the Clippers boast the 11th best defense since Christmas and are still top-10 on the season after ranking in the top five before then. This had allowed them to withstand an offense that has ranked no better than 24th with George healthy and how they were able to stymie the Hawks despite ranking 29th in offense since he went down.
"You've got to slow down, be patient, and make the defense work." pic.twitter.com/cHbeDAali5
— Bally Sports: Hawks (@HawksOnBally) January 16, 2022
The other conference finalists are a combined 45-25 at home with the L.A. the only team having double-digit losses in their gym. Four of those (12 total) losses coming since they lost George, by the way.
To Nate McMillan‘s point, the defense is the biggest issue.
The Hawks are a top-10 offense on the season averaging 110.5 points per game. However, they are 24th over their last five games and 26th at home in that span. Their defense has also been atrocious, ranking 25th in points per game, 26th in three-point percentage, and 28th in field goal percentage defensively.
They are 28th in opponent scoring and three-point efficiency on this current skid.
No one can argue the impact health has had on the Hawks season, constantly shuffling lineups has hindered trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t
The reason the current slide is the most disturbing, though, is that it comes as they’ve gotten healthier save for Clint Capela and the last two late collapses have come on the heels of a trade that was supposed to clear things up.
When viewed through the lens of their playoff contemporaries, against whom the Hawks are 1-2 this season, it looks even worse for Atlanta who is closer to fire sale than loading up for a stretch run at this point.