Tonight’s contest between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors was a heavily hyped affair going into it, but it’s fair to say the two best teams in their respective conferences lived up to hype with Hawks winning 124-116 at Philips Arena Friday night.
I mentioned in the preview that Hawks’ guard Jeff Teague would have to outplay Stephen Curry to win this game, and he did. Teague was all over the place both on the offensive end and the defensive end as well. Teague scored 23 points, went a perfect 11-for-11 from the charity stripe, and had three critical steals throughout the night. But he wasn’t the MVP of the night.
The MVP wasn’t Kyle Korver, it wasn’t Paul Milsap and it wasn’t DeMarre Carroll; it was Al Horford. Sometimes, a player’s single-game plus/minus number matches the eye test. Tonight was an example of this being the case. Horford finished with a +17, the highest mark on the team, and whenever he Al had to exit the game for a breather or foul trouble it felt like the Warriors would immediately take advantage. Milsap was forced to play some minutes at the five, Mike Scott too, and the Hawks struggled when they found themselves in this predicament. Without Horford tonight, the Warriors probably win.
It wasn’t just the starters who excelled for the Hawks tonight: Scott was on fire going 5-of-7 from the field, 3-3 from deep, and was a perfect 4-4 from the free-throw line. Scott was able to find some great looks in pick-and-roll situations and even had some nice isos on smaller Warrior defenders a few times. But the bench help didn’t end with Scott.
Kent Bazemore and Dennis Schroder were also huge off the bench each contributing in their own unique way. Bazemore was hot early making three corner 3s to keep the Hawks’ offense afloat when Horford was out of the game. Schroder was as pesky as ever scoring nine points and dishing seven dimes in 18 minutes of action. Antic was really the only bench player who struggled tonight.
I wouldn’t mind seeing these two teams play again. And again. And again.
Notes:
- I’m not entirely sure why Pero Antic was getting minutes over Elton Brand in this game. When Al was in foul trouble, and Pero playing like he was, I figured we’d some Brand to deal with the Warriors’ bigs physical play down low.
- I think the Hawks missed Thabo’s rebounding tonight, and could have used him a lot in situations where Shaun Livingston was killing smaller Hawks’ guards in the post. Surprised Golden State didn’t utilize that more because I don’t think Livingston missed an iso post-up all night.
- Golden State played Kyle Korver incredibly well and he still went 5-of-9 from deep. He’s incredible.
- Did Marreese Speights shoot? Yes. Always yes.
- Stephen Curry was definitely off his game tonight. He had a lot of good looks, but he missed them. Never found his groove offensively. Seemed a lot more active defensively, outside of that big three-pointer run with Klay Thompson.
- David Lee was the worst player on the floor for a lot of this game.
- Harrison Barnes was breezing by Korver a lot early, but he seemed to drift out of the offense a lot after that. Another missed opportunity, I think.
- Not sure why Dominique kept saying Draymond Green couldn’t hang with Milsap. I thought he played him pretty well all night. He even grabbed 20 boards inside.
- It never feels like Milsap is scoring a lot. Ever.
- It felt like the Hawks were getting killed by poor officiating, but the free-throw differential for both teams says otherwise. Very strange.
Next up: The Memphis Grizzlies in Memphis on Feb. 8 at 6:00 EST.
