The Nuggets amassed 76 points in the paint en route to a comfortable victory.
The Atlanta Hawks’ four-game winning streak was brought to a halt as the Denver Nuggets prevailed in a 139-120 victory on Wednesday night at Ball Arena in Denver.
Nikola Jokic posted a triple-double of 23 points, 17 rebounds, and 15 assists. Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. added 21 points apiece. For the Hawks, Trae Young scored a game-high 30 points while De’Andre Hunter added 20 points off the bench.
Heading into this contest both sides were without their respective starting power forwards, with Aaron Gordon absent for the Nuggets while a right shoulder injury ruled out Jalen Johnson from this contest, in addition to the continued absence of Bogdan Bogdanovic for the visitors. The Hawks, however, were boosted by the return of Dyson Daniels following a two-game absence, raising the available number of Hawks bodies to 10, though they ran a nine-man rotation for the majority of the game.
The first half of this game followed one that has been of commonality for the Denver Nuggets this season: when Jokic is in the game, the Nuggets were quite comfortably the better team, but when Jokic is off the floor there’s trouble, and that’s how the first half unfolded.
While the Nuggets scored 40 points in the first quarter, the Hawks — behind strong first offensive quarter behind balanced scoring — were able to keep pace with Denver. When Jokic went to the bench for the first six minutes of the second quarter they turned a nine-point deficit into a four-point lead — their first lead of the night. When Jokic returned to the game, the usual trend unfolded, as the Nuggets immediately erased the Hawks’ short-lived lead and took a lead into the halftime break.
From here came the decisive third quarter.
The Hawks had been able to keep pace offensively with the Nuggets, who were able to get to their offense very easily with Jokic on the floor — getting into the paint and scoring with ease combined with great ball-movement inside the arc and from inside-to-outside for Denver’s threes. This continued all game, but when the Hawks’ offense hit a rough patch in the third quarter they had no answer defensively to stop the game-long bleeding defensively, and the Nuggets began to not just edge away but tear away, running the lead to as high as 26 points in the third quarter.
From here, the Nuggets faced no contest — their lead never falling below 15 points — and eased to a third straight victory.
Before we look at some of the issues that plagued the Hawks’ in the third quarter, let’s look at the Nuggets’ side of things offensively. Specifically, let’s look at some examples of the problems they created for the Hawks with their ball movement as this was a constant all game long, compounding the problem for the Hawks when their offense dried up.
The Nuggets’ cutting action — combined with the passing abilities of not just Jokic but Russell Westbrook, too — undid the Hawks often through lapses and sheer passing ability.
To start, Christian Braun gets the go-ahead on Young and Jokic immediately finds him inside for the layup:
Daniels’ help is unable to alter the shot at the rim here, and with Clint Capela having to guard Jokic this closely it takes him away from the rim. With no Johnson, it puts the Hawks in a tough spot protecting the rim with Jokic on the floor.
In the Jamal Murray/Jokic pick-and-roll, Jokic draws the defender away from the rim, and this allows Jalen Pickett to cut unopposed to the rim for the easy finish:
Next, Westbrook and Jokic again combine as Westbrook offloads to Jokic and proceeds to round the Atlanta defense, escapes Daniels, and Jokic finds him for the easy basket at the rim:
Again, the help defense to challenge at the rim is practically non-existent in these situations for the Hawks.
Here, Jokic backs down Hunter, but, critically, Michael Porter Jr. gets the jump on Daniels and is found by Jokic for the basket at the rim:
The Hawks didn’t exactly make life difficult for the Nuggets at times, and Young doesn’t covet himself in glory here as Westbrook easily escapes, forcing the defense to collapse and Westbrook is able to easily find Jokic for another basket at the rim:
In the second half, Garrison Mathews falls behind on the play behind the Jokic screen, forcing the rotation from Young but at the expense of leaving Braun completely alone. And when the pass is made to find him the outcome is inevitable:
Zaccharie Risacher was punished on a number of occasions last night with the Hawks’ ball-movement — this play being one such instance as Westbrook escapes on the give-and-go with Jokic to get the jump on Risacher, leading to a basket inside:
On the spin inside from Braun, Risacher is in place as the help defender but is undone by the fake, leading to another easy basket inside the paint:
The Nuggets combined this ability to get inside the paint into opportunities beyond the arc, possessions like this, where Jokic drives inside and kicks the ball out for a three in the corner:
On the drive from Westbrook, he draws the defense toward him and kicks the ball out to Porter Jr. for a three:
You get the general idea at this stage, and the Nuggets were able to do this all game. When the Hawks’ hit a cold stretch in the third, they had no reply or answers defensively for the Nuggets.
There were, of course, a few instances where the Hawks got some good opportunities but just missed, such as this open three-point attempt from Risacher:
Here, De’Andre Hunter gets to the mid-range and misses the open shot:
The Hawks shot 9-of-26 from the field and 2-of-12 from three in the third quarter, with misses coming in a variety of ways.
Here, Dyson Daniels gets into the lane but misses the shot at the rim amongst traffic:
The Hawks attempt to move the ball, with Young just getting the ball out from under him before his feet land. The pass to Daniels is shifted to the corner but the shot from Mathews is quick and he’s not quite set, resulting in a miss:
Mathews would miss another three moments later, this one a more contested than the last:
Daniels in particular struggled in the third quarter, shooting 0-of-5 from the field including this airball from three:
Followed by this shot wildly missing left:
Daniels also lost track of this attempt, before the ball falls out of play:
Trae Young, while he scored 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting in the third quarter, was unable to impose himself on the game during this time, and the supporting cast weren’t able to convert their shots, nor enjoy high quality shots. And so the Nuggets quickly turned this game on its head.
By the end of the third quarter it was effectively all over, and the Hawks cut their losses early — with four minutes to go in the fourth quarter — with the L.A. back-to-back looming over the weekend.
The third quarter stretch offensively for the Hawks obviously made affairs beyond their control, but the theme would have persisted all game long as it had: the Nuggets dominated the paint and would continue to cut effectively against the Hawks. The hosts scored 139 points (76 of them coming in the paint) on 56.4% shooting, showcasing the Hawks inability to defend consistently; a point Hawks head coach Quin Snyder immediately highlighted postgame.
“We didn’t defend,” said Snyder. “We were scoring in the first quarter and they did the same — they had two 40-point quarters. We didn’t score in the third but the defense was the same. We weren’t able to keep them out of the paint; a lot of it was in transition. We were just late, a step slow in a lot of things.”
“We weren’t shifted the way we need to be, our reactions were slow,” Snyder elaborated. “It started in transition, we were just spread out and the lane was open. Particularly with their size and Jokic’s ability to find those cutters — if there’s any window he’s going to find it. We needed to do a better job of that and we didn’t. We knew they were going to cut, they cut on us last game — that’s what they do.”
The Hawks, as we saw, were too slow in their responses to cuts but the Nuggets — particularly Jokic and Westbrook — moved the ball and made excellent cuts. Westbrook and Jokic completely dominated this game — their passing abilities in addition to the penetration and/or off-ball movement made life for the Hawks absolute hell. The Nuggets produced a season-high 44 assists, with Westbrook and Jokic accounting for 26 assists.
From the Hawks’ perspective, offensively — other than that third quarter stretch — they had a good offensive night but just had nothing to give defensively, even with Daniels returning to the lineup. Daniels didn’t look his normal self in this game. How much of that was the matchup or just coming back from injury is unclear.
What was clear was the Hawks missed Jalen Johnson, but when the impact of his absence was put to Snyder postgame, he deflected the absence somewhat and highlighted the Hawks’ lack of urgency in transition, which he pointed out any one of the Hawks could have showed last night.
“You’re always going to have players out,” said Snyder. “Obviously Jalen is a good player, but if we had urgency in transition…anyone can do that. We weren’t urgent out of the gate. They’re really good at passing the ball ahead. If you run back with your man that makes it tough, if you run back with that vision that makes it tough, and if you’re a little slow running back that makes it even harder.”
The Nuggets scored 21 fastbreak points, but to be fair to the Hawks there were some transition baskets that there is little defense for, such as this transition play led by Jokic:
The center matchup was one that was always very likely to go in Jokic’s favor — neither Capela nor Onyeka Okongwu were realistically going to slow down Jokic.
Looking at the Hawks’ effort and identifying those positive moments from last night, Vit Krejci looked good off the bench, scoring 14 points, including 3-of-8 from behind the arc, which was a positive note for Snyder.
“There was no hesitation,” said Snyder of Krejci’s shot. “He’s a really good shooter, I’ve seen him shoot a lot. It was good to see the ball go in, was happy to see that just to bolster his confidence a bit. Sometimes, no matter how many times you tell a player ‘Keep shooting, those are good shots,’ when the ball goes in its affirming.”
Similarly, Hunter was good off the bench, scoring 20 points on 7-of-14 from the field and 3-of-6 from three. Trae Young was also efficient, scoring 30 points on 8-of-17 shooting from the field and 4-of-10 from three. Over his last 10 games, Young has shot 40% from three on 8.9 attempts per game as his three-point shooting numbers continue to recover after a slow start. For the season, Young is now shooting 33.8% from three. Zaccharie Risacher also had a decent showing, scoring 13 points.
However, Daniels struggled offensively in this game, shooting 4-of-17 from the field and struggled particularly in the third quarter as we looked at. But, ultimately, the offense was not the issue here; rather, the defense was porous, but the Nuggets deserve a lot of credit for their part in breaking the Hawks down over and over and over again.
The Hawks have been on an excellent run of late and this loss, really, doesn’t mean a whole lot. The Nuggets were very strong offensively and boasted a major advantage in terms of their depth (the Hawks only had 10 available bodies last night, only deploying the tenth in the form of Dominick Barlow in garbage time), and historically the Hawks tend not to succeed in Denver.
The Hawks and Nuggets will move on, and this loss will not define the road trip. The upcoming tilts in L.A. will go a long way to determining a successful road trip.
The Hawks (18-16) will head to L.A. to take on the Lakers (18-14) on Saturday night. The Lakers will be on the second night of a back-to-back (playing at home against the Trail Blazers on Friday), while the Hawks begin a back-to-back on Saturday.
Until next time!