The Hawks’ season is very strange. So much so that right now it is almost impossible to imagine where it will end up. After playing the last Eastern final and preserving with money and enthusiasm a roster promising, the disaster seemed a fact until a resurrection has come that seemed unexpected just two weeks ago: After beating the Celtics with great authority (108-92), the Georgians are 23-25 with six wins in a row. They have arrived after five consecutive losses and nine in eleven games. From 14-14 everything seemed to go to waste. But now they touch 50% again and caress the area play in. They have overtaken the Knicks and have a game to Raptors and these same Celtics (25-25) that are the definition of a team that lives day to day: if the shots enter the Jay’s (Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum), good. If the rival is accessible or arrives with problems, fine. If the night is twisted, the same mistakes are repeated. Match after match. The Celtics aren’t a hot or cold team, unlike the Hawks. They are what they are.
There’s an astonishingly consistent pattern to the Celtics’ losses: bad last quarters, infumable traffic jams in attack, very clear lack of brain on track, bad shots to try to save situations that still don’t require heroics when Udoka’s start trying them. In Atlanta they rowed after a first half in which the defense of the Hawks, a shadow until a few days ago, demanded a lot of them and two sets to close the first two quarters (10-0 and 12-2) left them off the hook (62 -47). With 9:42 to go they only lost by one (85-84) and then they went 18-2 for almost seven minutes. (103-86 with three minutes to go). Celtics fans, slipping away from seventh place and forcing themselves to look back even further, know this movie all too well: Tatum had 20 points on 17 shots and Brown had 26 on 22. Between the two, 14/39 shooting and 12 turnovers for 7 assists. As a team, under 45% shooting, 7/36 shooting from 3-point range, 15 assists to 16 turnovers and 17 bench points for the 46 of the rival substitutes.
The Hawks stuck to what has started to work for them. Kevin Huerter is already undoubtedly Trae Young’s squire (21+9+6 with 8/25 shooting) in the backcourt headline with Bogdanovic (19 points) and Gallinari (14 without fail) solidifying a second unit which was key in the stretch of the last quarter, the checkmate. Okongwu’s work provides important relays in an internal game in which John Collins recorded 21 points, 9 rebounds and 4 blocks while waiting to see what happens with him in the market that closes on the 10th. The Hawks are back, on time. And they accelerate with everything. The Celtics are neither going nor coming, they are still stuck somewhere in the East, far from where they want to be and dangerously close to where they would not like to see themselves at all. Others waiting for news between now and closing.
HEAT 121-CLIPPERS 114
Far ahead of the area where the Hawks and Celtics are fighting for their lives, the Heat (32-17 now) lead the East with one loss fewer than the Bulls, two fewer than the Cavs, Sixers and Nets and three fewer than the Bucks. Tonight they saved the visit of the team that never dies, those Clippers from comebacks who didn’t do it again… but they tried. They were down 76-56 in the third quarter and 96-80 before the start of the fourth. They got within 109-102 with three minutes remaining and forced PJ Tucker and Tyler Herro to hit two big 3-pointers. And Jimmy Butler to secure the victory with a good pulse from the free throw line (117-113 in the last minute).
Butler finished with 26 points, 6 rebounds and 9 assists and Bam Adebayo with 20+12+4. In addition, Tucker scored 18 points, Herro this time only 11 and Duncan Robinson’s triples (4/7, 16 points) and especially Gabe Vincent (7/12, all before the fourth quarter, and 23 points) were worth a lot.. In the Clippers, Luke Kennard tried the impossible again (23+6+3) accompanied by Bledsoe (19+4+6), Batum, Reggie Jackson, Hartenstein… The Angelenos are eighth in the West with a very creditable 25-26.
SPURS 131-BULLS 123
The Bulls continue to slip away from that head of the East, weighed down terribly defensively by the losses of Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso. The Spurs distributed 35 assists and shot very comfortably, led by Dejounte Murray (29+9+12) and Derrick White (14+4+9), 21 assists for a backcourt that fed everyone: Poeltl (21+11+4), Johnson, Walker, Vassell, McDermott… The Spurs (19-31) had lost nine of the last 12 games and had a pleasure in DeMar DeRozan’s return to San Antonio, a night that was anything but a defensive clinic. DeRozan added 32 points (13 games of at least 30 in the season), 6 rebounds and 8 assists, and Zach LaVine 30 (12 for his part). The Bulls remain at 30-18, still second in the East but in a fight in which there are up to six teams involved and in which they begin to seem the weakest link.
Bucks 123-Knicks 108
Although they are not at their best, the Bucks are much better than the Knicks, a team that falls in the East (23-27), twelfth and one game away from play in, that does not recover ground and that the Hawks have already overtaken. In Milwaukee, Thibodeau’s men held on for three quarters (93-88) in a duel without much defensive intensity until the Bucks got serious: 113-97 in the middle of the last quarter. Giannis Antetokounmpo added 7 points in a row and 12 with 5 rebounds in that last quarter. In total, 38+13 with 5 assists. Middleton went to 20+7+4 and Jrue Holiday to 24+5+10. The Bucks are fourth (31-20) two games off the lead but only half ahead of the sixth. For the Knicks, points from Fournier (25) and Barrett (23 on 20 shots) but very little from Robinson, Kemba Walker (8 on 8 shots) and the disappointing Julius Randle: 9 points and 11 rebounds with more turnovers (4) than assists (3) and more games this season (7) with fewer than ten points than with more than 30 (5). The thing does not seem to have remedy in New York.
MAGIC 119-PISTON 103
The Magic swept the Pistons in the duel between the two worst teams in the NBA: 10-40 now for Florida, who added their third win in double-digit advantage, and 11-37 for Michigan, who delivered the match in a horrible first quarter (39-19). On rookie night, the best was Franz Wagner, the Magic forward who is having a great season: 13 points in that first quarter and 24 in total. His teammate Jalen Suggs did not shine in attack (6+4 assists) but he defended well a Cade Cunningham who had just added 32 points against the Nuggets and stayed at 8. He opened the game with 0/11 in shots and finished in 3 /17. The triples of Ross (21 points) and Okeke and the production of Mamba (18 + 11) ended up tipping the balance.
THUNDER 110-PACERS 113
Ahead of Magic and Pistons, the Pacers are the third worst team in the East and the other in the Conference that is not going to even fight for the play in. A team that sells everything facing the closing of the market on February 10 but that he needed a victory as it were, after three consecutive losses, the last one with the 158 points that they took from the Hornets. That victory came, with comeback and suffering in OKC, against the second worst team in the West (14-34). The Thunders, who lost Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to an ankle injury in the third quarter, led 66-51 after opening that third quarter with a 12-0 lead. But the game ended in overtime in which a local 108-102 disappeared thanks to the work of Justin Holiday (22 points), one of those who has the most chances of leaving Indiana. Domantas Sabonis finished with 24 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists, her fifth triple-double of the season.. In the Thunder, 27 points and 8 rebounds from Lu Dort and 15+10+5 assists from the very notable rookie Josh Giddey.