A wounded Atlanta Hawks squad fell on the road 113-89 to the New York Knicks as Julius Randle lit up this Hawks team for 34 points on 52% shooting. The Hawks would hate to see him shoot for three, as he went 50% from behind the arc, with a high volume of 12 three-point shots.
The Hawks would lose Dejounte Murray in the process, as he went down early in the first quarter with an ankle injury. Murray would limp off the floor and not return. The team would shoot horribly from the floor in the loss. Despite a 15-0 run in the second quarter, they would lose to this team in a horrible fashion.
The Hawks were coming into this game down two starters; John Collins and De’Andre Hunter. They will still need to deal with these injuries going forward as Collins is still a week away from injury but Hunter may return for the Nets game.
After the injury to the Hawks’ star player, the Knicks took an early lead late into the beginning moments of the second quarter. The Hawks did make a 15-0 run in the second quarter, but that would only get the game within three and Knicks would blow them out in the third quarter. The game was basically over in the fourth quarter.
The short-handed Hawks shot horribly from the field vs NYK
Atlanta shot horribly from the field. Despite a solid night of shooting from Clint Capela, and Young (who shot horribly from three but was somewhat good from inside the arc ), the Hawks really didn’t shoot well tonight. The team shot 37% from the field overall, and a horrible 16% from three.
The worst offender of this was Bogdan Bogdanovic, who went zero out of 10 from three, and 18% from the field overall. This is a very discouraging sign from Bogdanovic’s second appearance this season. He returned from injury on Monday against Thunder, shooting (and playing WAY Better) 50% from three. Hopefully, this was just a cold night for the sixth man.
A.J. Griffin struggled in this game as well. In his third career start, he went 23% from the field, scoring 9 points. He struggled from three in this matchup only making one of his eight threes.
Nate McMillan said it's tough to win when threes aren't falling. pic.twitter.com/mv68nJ15M2
— Bally Sports: Hawks (@HawksOnBally) December 8, 2022
What can Hawks fans take away from this game?
I was going to add a section about how the Hawks are limping into December, but I decided to just put the main takeaway as things are getting bad health-wise. Updates on Murray will take time but Collins is still a week away in the best-case scenario. Hunter will come back sooner than later, considering he has a chance to play on Friday but he still might not play.
We still don’t know the extent of Murray’s injury. It isn’t polite to speculate (so I won’t do this here) but if Murray is out for an extended time, it will be very bad for the Hawks.
A lot of what makes this offense interesting is the constant elite ball-handling teams have to face. Additionally, Murray has helped a lot on defense this season. If the All-Star is out for an extended time, the Hawks have no way to replace that on top of the production that Murray provides.