The Hawks took their first lead very late on, but they could not hold on.
The Atlanta Hawks were unable to follow up their thrilling New York victory, falling to defeat to the Detroit Pistons on Friday night at Little Caesars Arena, 122-121.
Trae Young led the Hawks with 35 points to go with 13 assists, with Jalen Johnson adding 20 points. For the Pistons, Cade Cunningham posted a triple-double of 22 points, 11 rebounds, and 13 assists. Malik Beasley and Tobias Harris also added 22 points each.
For the game itself: Hawks come back from 24 down, but fall short at the end
The Hawks were up against it from minute one as the Pistons took only a few minutes to take a double-digit lead in the first quarter. The Pistons face-guarded Young to limit his involvement and force others to make plays, and when the Hawks’ efforts near the rim were swarmed upon, that helped force misses. The Pistons took a 17-point lead to end the first quarter, and this grew to 24 in the second quarter as things really began travel south.
The Hawks, however, chipped away and brought the lead down to a manageable 13 points heading into the half. From here, Young was instrumental in further reducing/maintaining the gap in the third quarter, combining with Johnson to help bring the lead momentarily below double-digits.
In the fourth, the Hawks looked as though they had blown an opportunity as they took the lead down to just five points before the third quarter ended it extended back to 14 points a couple of minutes in the fourth quarter and, surely, the momentum taken out of the fightback. However, a fine fourth quarter from Larry Nance Jr. (10 points) helped keep the Hawks in it, and a further raft of Detroit turnovers in the fourth quarter gave the Hawks an opening.
With two minutes remaining — and the Pistons holding a four point lead — both sides missed chances to cut/extend the lead, but the Hawks got the first breakthrough in the final minute as Young does what Young and draws bodies to him before kicking out to Dyson Daniels in the corner for a three to cut the lead to one:
The Hawks get the stop they need as Daniels sticks with Cunningham and contests his step-back shot to help force a miss:
Young has the ball in his hands, gets downhill, draws Isaiah Stewart off his feet, and Young draws the contact and the foul, and the opportunity to take the Hawks’ first lead of the game with 12 seconds remaining:
Young is usually excellent in these high pressure situations with the game on the line at the free throw line and dispatches both free throws to give the Hawks the lead.
Out of the timeout, the Pistons look to get going quickly, rather than wait to take the last shot of the game, and Cunningham catches and gets downhill. He’s marshalled by Daniels the whole way, but Cunningham lifts his shot high off the glass and in to give the Pistons the lead once again:
If you wanted to nit-pick, you could maybe say Johnson could have rotated a little quicker but I think credit has to go to Cunningham: this was a good drive, good defense, and Cunningham made a good basket off the glass.
Postgame, Dyson Daniels spoke about the play, saying Cunningham got the jump on him as Daniels tried to take away his right hand.
“He got me on the jab, I bit on the jab,” said Daniels. “I was trying to take his right hand away a little too much and then he got the step on me and got downhill to his left hand. Tough left-hand finish but I’ve got to keep him out of the paint and do a better job there. It stings, but we’ve got to move on, we’ve another game tomorrow.”
Out of the final timeout, Young catches deep in the backcourt with 8.5 seconds left, gets downhill, draws the attention of Stewart, drops the ball off to Onyeka Okongwu, who goes up to dunk but is blocked behind from Cunningham:
Did the inbounds have to go so deep into the backcourt? Probably not, but I’d argue it doesn’t change a whole lot in the end. Young is well spaced, gets downhill, gets by his man, draws the defender and makes the high-percentage play for Okongwu.
“The last play I think was ran perfect,” said Young. “I tried to make a play with space, if no one comes over to help I was going to shoot the floater. I think Stewart was in the game, he came over, jumped pretty big. I could have let him fall over me again but I felt like O had a good look and I tried to drop it off to him. I didn’t see the replay … I don’t know if he got hit by my man. The refs said it was all ball. I know my man didn’t get the block I don’t know if my man bumped him or anything.”
The immediate replays weren’t great, so it’s difficult to conclusively say for sure if Okongwu was fouled by Cunningham, but from the Hawks’ side of things I’m not sure you’d do anything differently. Young made the right play and pass. If it was clean, it’s just a good play from Cunningham to give the Pistons the win on both ends of the floor.
Nevertheless, the Hawks will be disappointed. To be down 24 points, to take that late lead so late on and to lose it right at the death will be difficult to accept. The Hawks may have lost this game on the last two possessions, but in reality the real damage was done in the first half and this was the point of reflection for the Hawks postgame as opposed to the final plays.
“The first quarter, we made a lot of mistakes defensively,” said Hawks head coach Quin Snyder. “Offense didn’t help our defense. After that, (the lead was) 27-25 whatever it was, big difference. We started to buckle down, it wasn’t like a huge spurt where we hit three threes in a row or whatever the case may be, we had to really grind to get back. I don’t know if we could have done anything more on Cunningham with the sweeping left-handed hook. It’s a hell of a shot.”
“We need a better start, that’s number one,” added Dyson Daniels. “We’ve been pretty good starting most of the year but they jumped us. We knew they were going to be physical but they got us in that first half. We need to be better there.”
The Pistons opened the game with 40 points on 62.5% shooting from the field and 5-of-10 from three. In contrast, the Hawks shot 30.8% from the field.
“I think they started off the game hitting the first four or five shots,” said Young. “Some of those weren’t easy but some of them were and that’s on us. We’ve got to start the game better and not even be in that situation. If we weren’t in that situation the result might have been different, for sure.”
Young excels despite being face-guarded…literally
Part of the reason for the offensive struggles in the first half — and a theme that was repeated throughout the game — was the defensive pressure Young faced from the Pistons. From the first quarter, the Pistons doubled and denied Young the ball, forcing the Hawks to find their offense from others and in the first quarter it just wasn’t happening.
“The key for that is we have to space the floor for him so he’s able to get off the ball so you’ve got to get open,” said Snyder. “He sees everything, all kinds of coverages. He sees smalls hedging, he sees the blitz … he did a great job bringing us back early in the second half. He was getting in the lane, making good decisions, hitting the open guy or taking his own (shot). An unfortunate night to play as well as we did for those three quarters and put ourselves in a position to win, but to start the game the way we did we made it hard. We competed, it’s one of those ones you want to win to put the affirmation on it.”
Despite it all, Young was — as always — a willing passer and still found a way to get efficiently involved in this game, scoring 35 points on 11-of-25 shooting from the field, 6-of-12 from three, 7-of-8 from the line to go with 13 assists.
Things got a little chippy in the fourth between Malik Beasley and Young, who emerged from the matchup with a very notably visible scratch mark on his face (which, to his disbelief even postgame, no foul was called for) but Young rose to the occasion and made plays all night long despite the pressure he faced. There are nights where Young isn’t able to keep his efficiency up when he’s guarded like this but last night wasn’t one of them. He was fantastic in this game.
Daniels stepping up on both ends
Dyson Daniels made a big impact on last night’s game on both ends of the floor, scoring 18 points on 7-of-17 shooting to go along with career-best seven steals. Prior to last night, Daniels was leading the NBA in deflections and is now leading the NBA in steals per game with three. The Pistons’ carelessness helped somewhat last night in a couple of spots but Daniels was his usual self on defense causing chaos.
“That’s what I do,” said Daniels of his steals. “Active hands, getting deflections, try and make it tough for the ball-handler bringing it up. Some nights I’m going to get a lot of them, some nights it’s going to be a little quieter. Tonight it was a good night for me on the defensive end but that last play stings a little bit.”
Snyder credited Daniels’ defense as to one of the elements that helped the Hawks recover as they made the uphill battle to reduce a sizeable Detroit lead.
“He’s been making plays like that, it’s one of the ways we came back,” said Snyder of Daniels.
The defensive side of things everyone is getting used to from Daniels, but a point of emphasis of late has been on the offensive end. In the last two games Daniels has attempted 16 and 17 field goal attempts respectively, as he tries to burden the load on Young, who played another 41 minutes last night and scored 35 points.
“I’m trying to be more aggressive out there, trying to help Trae a little more, he’s doing a lot of the work there,” said Daniels of taking more shots. “Trying to play off him a little bit, get to my floater and get downhill and finish at the rim. Last game was a shocker with the field goal percentage so this game I was trying to be more aggressive and get to the rim, couple of threes went down tonight. Definitely trying to be more aggressive on that end and I’m going to keep doing it.”
Nance gets his chance; impresses again
Larry Nance Jr. is an impactful player, but the Hawks only want to deploy him as a five, so it means with Clint Capela and Okongwu in the mix his playing time is limited. Last night, however, Snyder went to Nance in both halves and he delivered in both, scoring 13 points on a perfect 5-of-5 from the field and 3-of-3 from three.
Nance brings something that Capela and Okongwu can’t, which is shooting, and in this spot with how the Pistons guarded Young it prompted Snyder to call upon Nance.
“It’s hard for them to get any rhythm in the game when you’re playing three bigs,” said Snyder when asked about Nance Jr. “It felt like tonight — because they were blitzing — that Larry in the pocket, some of the spacing would be helpful to us. He made some big plays, particularly in the second half and it gave us a big lift.”
Young similarly credited Nance’s ability to space the floor in giving him — and other teammates — room to drive into.
“It always helps when a guy can shoot and space the floor and give us driving lanes,” said Young when asked about Nance. “Guys like Jalen, who plays downhill to get to the basket. You’ve got guys like Dyson to get downhill to get to the basket, especially when the five is out it always helps. All our bigs bring something different and that’s Larry definitely brings and helps us is his shooting.”
Nance was excellent in particular in the fourth quarter, scoring 10 points alone in the opening exchanges of the final period. It seems as though Nance is a matchup specific-type of rotation player for Snyder but should be more of a mainstay rotation piece.
All-in-all…
If you had told the Hawks when they were down 24 points in the first half that they’d be leading with 12 seconds remaining they would’ve taken your arm off — it was a great recovery that was built over the course of the game. There wasn’t one magic cow or silver bullet that got them back in this game, the Hawks grafted their way gradually, and Young was excellent in leading the way.
That said, the first quarter was particularly poor and it was ultimately costly. From listening to the Hawks speak postgame, they don’t believe the game was lost with those Cunningham plays at the end. I think both of those you have to live with and the Hawks couldn’t have done much more than they did. Cunningham made two good plays and deserves credit — he’s possibly on the best run of his career right now. But the Hawks will look at the first quarter and believe they could have done a lot better there, and that’s really where it was lost.
The Hawks (4-6) are back in action tonight at home to face the team that ended their season: the Chicago Bulls (3-6).
The Hawks are considered minor favorites as of right now, and have an immediate chance to respond to this loss.
…Until next time!