Hawks turnovers prove costly, fall to Spurs despite Okongwu career-high

A tough ending to a game the Hawks clawed their way back into.

The Atlanta Hawks fell to a 126-125 defeat against the San Antonio Spurs at State Farm Arena on Wednesday night. Trae Young led the Hawks with 32 points and 12 assists, while Onyeka Okongwu posted a new career-high of 30 points and 12 rebounds. For the Spurs, De’Aaron Fox made his Spurs debut and scored 24 points to go with 13 assists with Victor Wembanyama adding 24 points and 12 rebounds.

Heading into the contest, the Hawks were potentially adjusting to the new way of things, not just right now but potentially the future too. Jalen Johnson and Kobe Bufkin remain out with season-ending shoulder injuries and the Hawks will continue to have to adjust to Johnson’s still recently fresh absence.

In the grander scheme of things, Bogdan Bogdanovic (not with team) was out, and Clint Capela was ruled out for personal reasons, on which — when asked pre-game — Hawks head coach Quin Snyder did not want to elaborate on.

Whether the absences of Bogdanovic and Capela are related to the trade deadline remains to be seen, but last night they were both out. Okongwu continues to start anyways, but the absence of both does hurt the Hawks’ depth and bench (which, spoilers, was not great again last night in terms of points production: outscored 34-16).

The Hawks began the game shooting the ball well — the presence of Wembanyama prompting the Hawks to some early perimeter shots which they hit — but this all dried up, ironically, after Wembanyama went to the bench. The Hawks decline in the first quarter — and subsequently the first half — had less to do with hot shooting drying up but more so with the Hawks failing to take care of the ball and the Spurs scoring off of turnovers.

Perhaps fittingly, the very first possession of the game was one where Young turns the ball over and the Spurs capitalize, scoring in transition through Devin Vassell:

A perfect microcosm for the rest of the game, as it turned out.

Here, Keaton Wallace’s pass up the court is intercepted by Julian Champagnie and is offloaded to Stephon Castle who finds Jeremy Sochan for the basket at the rim:

Young’s attempts to get to the rim and his pass to the weakside corner is intercepted, fueling the fastbreak in which Chris Paul gets the ball to Fox, who pulls up and hits the three:

Fox was excellent in the first half, scoring 18 points 8-of-12 shooting from the field, a couple of these coming in these scenarios when the Hawks commit the turnover and Fox can utilize his pace and/or his ability to pull up. On this possession, neither are required as Young commits the turnover as Fox streaks ahead for the dunk all alone:

The Spurs had opened up a double-digit lead in the first quarter and began to stretch this out in the second quarter. The Hawks, meanwhile, racked up 12 first half turnovers and coughed up a few to end the first half.

Young’s pass inside is again pounced upon, and the Spurs streak ahead, this time it’s Castle who finishes in transition:

Castle gets his hands on an attempted Young pass for another turnover, finding Sochan for the dunk in transition:

To further compound the turnover story, De’Andre Hunter throws the ball out of bounds heading up the floor on the miscue with Dyson Daniels (left in unedited form to show Dominique’s Wilkins’ disapproval prior to another turnover taking place):

This was an particularly disappointing end to the first half as the Hawks had made a bit of a run and cut the lead to nine points with 2:05 remaining. But a couple of misses, a couple of Fox baskets, and then those turnovers/easy points for the Spurs just killed all momentum. And by the time both teams headed for the locker room the visitors did so with an 18-point lead (one which would quickly grow to a game-high 20 points to begin the third quarter).

The Hawks made some steady inroads in the third quarter before an 11-0 run sliced the lead to three points with 2:47 remaining behind three double-digit third quarter efforts by Young (11 points, six assists), Hunter (11 points), and Okongwu (13 points, eight rebounds) as the Hawks scored 43 third quarter points.

Okongwu was brilliant all game, but he made a big impact in the third quarter especially, scoring 13 points on 6-of-8 shooting and 1-of-2 from three (his third three on the game in total, also marking a career-best). Okongwu made some good plays while Wembanyama was on the floor, including this tough left handed hook at the rim:

When Wembanyama was otherwise occupied (as he was on the Young layup attempt) Okongwu was immediately on it, collecting the offensive rebound and scoring at the rim:

When Wembanyama was off the floor, it wasn’t even a contest inside; the Spurs had no answer for Okongwu’s size and athleticism, again attacking the offensive glass and finishing the second chance:

Nor did the Spurs stand a chance when Okongwu got a head of steam inside, scoring on the drive here:

Outscoring the Spurs 43-31 in the third, the Hawks were hanging on in this game and the Hawks bench finally gave them a lift, with Vit Krejci hitting a three before Dominick Barlow made some big plays to begin as Okongwu rested.

In the pick-and-roll with Young, Barlow catches and rolls to the rim, finishing at the rim plus the foul:

Barlow would go on to hit a three in the corner, with Krejci swinging the ball for the assist:

Defensively Barlow was also active, blocking two shots in the fourth quarter, the first on Castle at the rim:

And producing another block on Champagnie, but is unlucky that Champagnie is immediately able to gather the loose ball and score on the follow:

Barlow’s case could be potentially interesting going forward, depending on what happens in a hypothetical Capela trade (and what might come back). Right now, Barlow is a two-way player, but last night could prove an interesting insight should Barlow’s role increase in any frontcourt trade where no center comes back. Barlow has been up and down, but last night he made a solid impact in that fourth quarter.

Okongwu returned for Barlow, and the two sides traded blows for the remainder of the quarter with the San Antonio lead never growing beyond seven points. Trae Young found his rhythm, scoring 12 points in the final frame including the free throws that tied the game at 123-123 with 49 seconds remaining after Hunter’s quick five points brought the Hawks within two points.

The Spurs quickly retook the lead, as Fox’s miss at the rim is cleaned up by Wembanyama:

Young responds out of the Hawks timeout, getting the better of Chris Paul on the drive and getting his runner to fall to tie the game again:

“We just wanted to get me to my right hand and get me some space,” said Young of the tying shot. “If somebody helps I was going to find them but I was able to get to my spot. I think all the fans and everybody might tell the refs let the players play and allowed me to go score on that end instead of calling a foul. I wish they had done the same on the other end.”

In the subsequent San Antonio possession, Hunter gets his lines crossed and loses Wembanyama in the screening action, forcing Okongwu to rotate. Okongwu challenges the dunk attempt at the rim but is called for the foul:

Speaking postgame, Okongwu was not impressed with the foul call, especially given the time of the game.

“I feel like for that, the officials should let the players play,” said Okongwu. “Especially for a dude like him (Wembanyama), he’s like 8-foot tall; shouldn’t be getting that call at the end of the game like that. It happens. We’ll move onto Milwaukee on Friday.”

Okongwu is called for the foul here, but it’s a costly mistake from Hunter here, who didn’t need to switch to the ball handler here as Daniels had Fox covered, allowing Wembanyama to get downhill in the first place. From here, the Hawks challenging this foul call I get the sense was more so out of hope and perceived necessity at this stage of the game but it was shortsighted.

A quick look at the replay — as the Hawks likely had available to them on the bench — would’ve shown them Okongwu made illegal contact with Wembanyama, so the call wasn’t going to be overturned. In doing so, however, the Hawks burned their final timeout by losing the challenge, which meant once Wembanyama was finished shooting the free throws the Hawks would have, maximum, 2.9 seconds remaining to go the entire floor.

In the end, it ended up worse than that as Wembanyama hits the first free throw to give the Spurs the lead and then intentionally missed the second free throw to get the clock rolling. The Hawks captured the loose ball, but with no timeouts and the clock already ticking they had to go almost immediately. Young’s halfcourt heave is missed, and the Spurs win the game:

From the Hawks’ perspective on the bench, challenging the call could have gone either way but it turned out to be very costly and the Hawks — having worked so hard to recover from a 20-point deficit and tying the game very late on — fall to defeat and were disappointed to do so after fighting uphill in the second half.

“Our guys were so tough-minded to come back the way that they did,” said Snyder. “That wasn’t easy; we weren’t making any shots in the first half and we just hung in there. That competitive spirit was great to see.”

Snyder was asked about the challenge postgame, in which he appeared — and sounded — to be remorseful over the challenge, knowing what it cost and it playing a major part in losing the game in those final seconds.

“The calculus is that you second guess yourself on all of it,” said Snyder when asked about the challenge. “In hindsight, we didn’t win the challenge, it hurts you with the timeout. We’ll dwell on that, I’ll think about that one. It’s a tough way at the end, especially when our guys did as good a job as they did coming back.”

Similarly, Trae Young was also asked by Brad Rowland whether the Hawks had anything planned in the event Wembanyama made the second free throw and hinting to the cost of not having the timeout and how the Spurs approached the second free throw because of it.

“If he had made the second shot, definitely we had something planned,” said Young. “But they missed it on purpose since we challenged, and we didn’t have a timeout left. Obviously if we could go back in hindsight we probably wouldn’t have challenged it. It’s tough, the way that game ended.”

Not having the timeout certainly played a giant hand in costing the Hawks the game in those final seconds, but what cost the Hawks the game over 48 minutes were their turnovers. We’ve looked at these already, especially in the first half, but the Hawks committing 20 turnovers leading to 28 San Antonio points is a large disparity to recover from.

The Hawks did a better job in the second half, eight turnovers, but the 12 that occurred in the first half contributed to 20 Spurs points and helped put the Hawks in an 18 point hole. They spent the rest of the game chasing and chasing, and that’s why Snyder in particular seemed to be hurting for his players who spent so much getting back into the game only to make a mistake by challenging the call.

It’s a shame for the Hawks, because outside of the turnovers they played well — shooting 52% from the field, hitting 16 threes, dishing out 33 assists, and had two 30-point performances, 22 points from Hunter and 19 points from Daniels.

Daniels (13 points) and Okongwu (15 points) helped carry the Hawks offensively in the first half, and then Young emerged in the second half had an excellent offensive second half, scoring 23 of his 32 points on 8-of-13 shooting (10-of-21 on the night), with Hunter similarly finding his rhythm in the second half (16 points), while Okongwu continued to roll (scoring another 15 points).

Okongwu set a new career high of 30 points on 13-of-16 from the field and 3-of-5 from three — all marking new career-highs. Snyder discussed Okongwu’s impact on the game postgame, in addition to his three-point shooting which pleased Snyder.

“O is always physical, but his instincts are getting better and better,” said Snyder of Okongwu. “Even inside, he’s got a great feel around the rim even with Wembanyama down there and shot fake, he’s got such a good touch. I was glad with the threes, to see him be that aggressive. It’s one thing to take open ones, it’s another to take them when they’re not as open and he was really definitive in that.”

“I told myself Wemby is tall,” added Okongwu on shooting more threes. “I decided to space out a little more! Once that first one went in I was confident, the second one…it’s one of those days! The coaches believe in me, teammates keep telling me to shoot the ball so I’m going to keep letting it fly.”

Trae Young was asked about the dynamics having a center that shoots above the break, and Young gave a detailed answer about how it opens things up offensively for the Hawks.

“Whenever you have a big who can space and shoot threes it always make it easier for a guard, especially for someone like me who likes getting into the paint and get into creases,” said Young when asked about Okongwu’s shooting. “Most of the time I’m trying to draw someone else’s man. If I’m able to get downhill and my man is chasing after me and the big is in front of me, I know my big is there ready to shoot. It’s a pro any time your big can shoot threes.”

An interesting insight from Young on the matter, and a dynamic the Hawks have obviously incorporated in their starting lineup for a few weeks now, regardless what happens at the trade deadline later today. On the eve of the deadline, and on the night Capela wasn’t with the team (even if it wasn’t for reasons due to the trade deadline), it just felt like a night where Okongwu just made the center spot completely his — a new ‘era’ for the Atlanta Hawks and their center spot. Of course, this will be awkward when Capela isn’t dealt and he’s back on the bench for Friday’s game against the Bucks, but I think you understand the sentiment being laid down — it just felt like a landmark night for Okongwu, even if he’s been starting for a few weeks now.

For the game itself, obviously it was a tough way to lose in those last seconds, but the turnovers and the lack of bench production hurt the Hawks here. We’ll see by the end of the day what that situation looks like later today: either Capela and/or Bogdanovic stay and they eventually return to the rotation to bolster the bench. Or, one/both are moved and other arrive to fill the recent absences. We shall see!

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The Hawks (23-28) are back in action on Friday against the Milwaukee Bucks (27-22) at State Farm Arena!

Until next time!