They’re shorthanded, but it’s another disappointing defeat for the Atlanta Hawks.
The Atlanta Hawks lost a third consecutive game, unable to exact revenge against the Washington Wizards’ loss on Monday night as they fell in a 133-120 defeat to the Wizards at the Capital One Arena on Wednesday night.
Trae Young led the Hawks with 35 points and 11 assists with Jalen Johnson adding 21 points and 17 rebounds. For the Wizards, Bilal Coulibaly scored a career-high 27 points, and Jordan Poole added 24 points.
For the game itself: Down, up, down…then just down
Entering the game, the Hawks were dealt further and more significant injury blows. In addition to the already sidelined De’Andre Hunter, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Kobe Bufkin, and Vit Krejci, Dyson Daniels also missed this game due to injury. David Roddy stepped into the starting lineup alongside Jalen Johnson as forwards, with Zaccharie Risacher as the starting two-guard.
The Hawks began this game in a similar fashion to the fourth quarter of Monday’s game; the Wizards were active defensively and getting out and running in transition and found themselves with an early 13-point lead. The momentum, however, shifted significantly as both Coulibaly and Alex Sarr ran into foul trouble, and Young found his feet early getting to the rim or getting to his floater, scoring 14 first quarter points.
The Hawks would then take a double-digit lead themselves in the second quarter as the Wizards could not recover from their defensive losses of Coulibaly and Sarr. Coulibaly in particular seemed a little timid, not wanting to pick up a third foul when he was back on the floor.
The Hawks led much of the third quarter, leading by nine points after a Keaton Wallace three, and then began one of two decisive Washington runs: a 16-2 run, largely dominated by Jonas Valanciunas and Bilal Coulibaly who made an unmistakable impact on this game — they were everywhere during this pivotal third quarter run, and the Hawks had no reply.
On the other end of the floor, Young’s attempts inside are thwarted by the block from Coulibaly:
Then, Coulibaly and Valanciunas combined in the pick-and-roll with Coulibaly hitting the jumper:
Onyeka Okongwu has to step up here and help Young challenge this shot. Coulibaly is 6-foot, 6-inches with a long wingspan and a much higher release point than Young can realistically contest — though not for a lack of effort here from Young.
Coulibaly showcases this length with a good contest on a subsequent three-point attempt from Young:
A pick-and-roll from Poole and Valanciunas leads to half an opening for Poole, which he needs no invitation to pull up and shoot it, hitting the three and cutting the lead to just two points:
After a miss at the rim from Garrison Mathews, following a good challenge at the rim by Valanciunas, the veteran big fakes his way past Okongwu in the paint to dunk the ball home, tying the game and leading to a Hawks timeout:
After the timeout, Okongwu misses a corner three and has no answer for the size of Valanciunas underneath the basket as a missed shot from Poole is collected by Valanciunas for the basket to give the Wizards a lead:
Off of a miss from three from Young, Poole delivers a great outlet pass to the streaking Coulibaly for the transition dunk, extending the Wizards lead:
Finally for this run, after a Wallace basket, Coulibaly hits another jumpshot off the find from Valanciunas:
The impact of Valanciunas and Coulibaly was instrumental in the Wizards turning a near double-digit deficit into a five point lead.
The Wizards entered the fourth quarter with a one-point lead, but another quick run to begin the fourth quarter gave them a double digit lead.
It started with a contested three that is missed by Risacher, and the Hawks just aren’t alert or quick enough in transition defense, and the ball is swung to Corey Kispert, who hits the quick three:
Alex Sarr made his impact in the fourth quarter, firstly by getting his hands on this drive from Johnson to come up with the steal:
On the other end, Sarr relocates to the corner after some good ball and man movement from the Wizards and hits the three:
The Hawks catch a break on the offensive end as Sarr’s fourth block of the game ends in the hands of Clint Capela, who then scores. But the Hawks allow a quick reply as Kyshawn George and Sarr easily unpick Risacher and Capela. With the threat of Sarr keeping Capela away from the rim, Risacher loses George on the cut, and George finishes at the rim:
Finally, after a missed three from Johnson in the corner, the Wizards immediately push and Carlton ‘Bub’ Carrington hits the three to give the Wizards a 10-point lead:
From this point, the Wizards were in control and continued to score against a tired Hawks side, pushing the lead to as many as 18 points in a comfortable victory.
Postgame, Hawks head coach Quin Snyder was left to reflect on the high minutes his side had to play (though, some of this was self-inflicted, more on that later), as well as lamenting the Hawks’ transition defense.
“Without focusing on any one guy, I did think he (Young) got tired late, the shots were short. That’s what happens when you play 40-plus minutes,” said Snyder. “That said, Keaton did a really good job when he came in. They’ve got some guards we had a tough job staying in front of consistently. It’s hard when the ball is driven in the paint, it’s hard to get rotations and get to shooters. The thing we have to really be mindful of are some of those things we have more control of whether it’s getting back on defense. Those are consistent themes that we care about and are working on, but when they have made runs those are usually the things: not getting stops and then converting the other way. That’s a collective thing.”
Young offered fewer excuses, saying that playing through fatigue is something prepared for in the offseason, before issuing a call to find more from within.
“That’s what we prepare in the offseason for,” said Young of the fatigue. “It takes some guys some games to get their legs under themselves. We’ve just got to find it, find more. Each of us have to figure out how to find more within ourselves and give more. It’s not just going to be one person that can take us over the top, we’ve got to do it together.”
Washington ignite offensively; Atlanta’s odd center deployment
The Wizards had a very easy time of it offensively: 133 points on 53.4% shooting from the field, 42% from three (making 16 of them) and 23-of-25 from the free throw line.
“They’ve shot the ball well against us,” said Snyder. “If you’re shooting 42% from three, those are open shots. When our offense sputtered they were converting and they run, they do a good job of that. We need more in those situations. Right now, I just want to see us compete and I thought we did that.”
All seven of the main Washington cast scored in double-digits, with Coulibaly in particular doing a lot of damage off the jumper. Valanciunas was fantastic as well, easily showing himself to be the best center on the game — that’s not ideal when the Hawks have Capela and Okongwu among their ranks but it wasn’t all their fault.
The way Snyder handled the center rotation was very odd. While he claimed postgame that he looked to match Capela’s minutes with Valanciunas; that is very misleading. Only in the fourth quarter did we see this transpire — by which point the damage was done.
Capela was mostly on the floor when Sarr was, and Okongwu on the floor when Valanciunas was, which is backwards from a matchup point of view. We looked at various clips here where Valanciunas feasted with Okongwu on the court and a few where Sarr got Capela out of his comfort zone and punished him.
It was poorly handled by Snyder, perhaps not the only element of the rotation handled poorly last night.
Rotation doldrums
The Hawks are obviously decimated in terms of their rotation and only had 10 available players, so the high minutes for Young and Johnson, and even Risacher, aren’t a surprise. What is frustrating is to see an impactful player like Larry Nance Jr., who would help in this situation on either end, play only six minutes last night.
Snyder must have feared a matchup element, why else would he not play more minutes when the Hawks have such a dyer need for bodies? David Roddy played solid, but also played 31 minutes — it makes little sense that Roddy plays 31 minutes and Nance just six minutes. The Hawks didn’t need to spread themselves so thin at forward but Snyder chose to do so in this spot by effectively not playing Nance.
It’s not as though the Hawks were getting stops by keeping Nance off the floor for whatever matchup they didn’t fancy. Would Nance have made things that much worse? Would their scoring have been worse off? It was a confusing element in last night’s rotation, in addition to the odd Capela/Okongwu matchup deployment.
Speaking of Risacher, Snyder had a long answer on Risacher postgame when asked about the Hawks rookie that I thought was worth including:
“He’s so young, it’s going to be less about his physique as it is his mind,” said Snyder of Risacher. “His body will catch up. That’s something that as you get older you have a chance to feel that and work at it and get stronger. It’s hard to work on your willingness to mix it up when you need to and that competitive spirit is something we’ve seen from him. The work ethic is something we’ve seen from him. We kept telling him ‘Just keeping shooting the ball and eventually you’re going to get more comfortable and you’re going to see the ball go in the basket.’ That hasn’t deterred him from doing other things and that’s a message for all our guys: if something is not falling, your shots not going in, you’re not scoring, how can you impact winning? I think that’s one of the things Zacch is finding that, and he’s not dwelling some of on the offensive things, he’s throwing himself into other aspects of the game. That shows a lot of maturity for a young guy.”
Risacher played OK, scoring 17 points on 7-of-15 from the field and 2-of-7 from three. Risacher had some good moments going to the basket, but the three-point shot wasn’t quite there last night, and it was rough defensively, too. Snyder alluded to the fact that Risacher had to guard Poole, which is a tough assignment for Risacher and, in general, there were moments Risacher was caught out defensively. There’s always going to be growing pains, ups and downs, and it’s still so early into Risacher’s career but last night he was fine.
Dealing with the fallout
So…here we are!
The Hawks had a very generous opening five games, minus the Thunder. You could actually go as far to say (on paper as we know the schedule/teams right now) this might be the most generous five game spell in the Hawks’ season. 4-1 was not just realistic, it was expected. Instead, the Hawks come out the other side 2-3, with two consecutive losses against the Wizards.
The mood among the fanbase is…a little tense, and it’s not unreasonable to feel this way. Injuries aside, the Hawks still had enough talent to win at least one of these two Washington games, and that’s being generous.
These Washington losses have now set a potentially worrying bar. The Wizards deserve some credit — they have an interesting mix of defense and length among their ranks, with very streaky players (and that’s without Kyle Kuzma, who did not play last night due to injury) who can ignite offensively. However, there are many, many better teams than the Wizards out there. What’s going to happen when the Hawks face the Kings and Pelicans coming up? The thought of the potential outcome against the Celtics next week is potentially horrifying.
The positivity and feel-good factor of the first two games of the season — maybe even three games with how well they pushed the Thunder through three quarters — has been utterly dashed with these two Washington losses, all of that is gone. Now, it’s turned into a case of trying to stay afloat as Atlanta navigates these injuries, and off the evidence of these last two games that may be a bleak proposition.
However, I refuse to end this column on such a bleak note, so here are some positives from last night’s game in rapid form:
- It was good to see Young’s floater go down; he was awesome in the fourth quarter. I’ll happily write off his three-point falloff in this game due to fatigue and move on.
- Keaton Wallace was really solid in the third quarter. He gave the Hawks a good boost in that phase of the game with Young on the bench on both ends of the floor.
- Garrison Mathews’ strong shooting continues, another 2-of-4 performance last night means Mathews is shooting 50% from three on six attempts per game. He’s been good this season and has really helped the Hawks’ bench this season so far.
The Hawks (2-3) are back in action on Friday night when they take on the Sacramento Kings (2-2) at State Farm Arena.
The Hawks need a response in a big way but face a Kings side looking to kick their season off too — it is set to be a high stakes contest.
…Until next time!