The Atlanta Hawks shortened their rotation and it worked

The Atlanta Hawks came back from 16 points down early in the second half to squeak out a win against the Miami Heat in their first home playoff game in the series. While they only won by a single point, it does not matter how much you win by, the series result now stands at 1-2 with another game at home to come.

While the game will be remembered for another Trae Young floater to win a game, he had one in the New York Knicks series last year, the nine minutes leading up to that shot are significant. In the first three minutes when Young was on the bench, the Hawks went down nine points in just that time.

However, then Young came on the court and just changed the game. That was the only real change that coach Nate McMillan made for the entire period. He did put Hunter in for defensive purposes with 1:03 left on the clock but subbed him out again for Young ten seconds later.

The Atlanta Hawks used only six players in the final period.

While the Hawks only used eight players for the entire game, they only used six in the final period. The two who did not play in the last frame? John Collins and Danilo Gallinari. While Collins is still impacted by his injuries, McMillan wisely chose to use Onyeka Okongwu for the entire last period,

This is showing some well-deserved faith in the sophomore as Collins should not play much at the center position in the playoffs. However, with Clint Capela still out, starting Collins alongside Gallinari seems to be McMillan’s favored starting frontcourt.

The Hawks went small-ball with four guards and Okongwu. Young, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Delon Wright, and Kevin Huerter proved to be impossible for the Heat to defend. The small lineup was even able to keep their big man Bam Adebayo to a single rebound in seven minutes. He also did not score during this time.

By contrast, Okongwu had seven points on perfect 3-of-3 shooting and collected two of his three rebounds on the offensive end. Bogdanovic and Wright continued to show that they are a huge part of this team as they have all throughout this series.