The Hawks faded late in a five-game road trip, falling to the Bucks

 

 

The Atlanta Hawks finished their five-game road trip with a tough game against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday night, but they came up short, falling 132-121.

Trae Young led the Hawks with 32 points and 12 assists, while Dejounte Murray chipped in with 30.

Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 32 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists, while Damian Lillard chipped in 25 points.

Playing in Milwaukee at the end of a five-game road trip isn’t easy, but the Hawks rose to the challenge and kept this game close throughout. A 42-point first quarter from Milwaukee was held in check by a 37-point effort from the Hawks, and while the Bucks maintained their lead throughout the second quarter, the Hawks hung with the hosts and even took a narrow lead in the third quarter, thanks to 20 and 18 first-half efforts from Young and Murray.

Despite the final result, the fourth quarter mirrored the first three quarters for the most part. The Bucks only broke away late with a 13-2 run to go up by 14 points before Saddiq Bey’s consolation three drew it back to an 11-point game.

I wanted to show you that 13-2 run, but the video isn’t available… We’ll try our best with what we’ve got.

The Bucks start by moving the ball to the corner, where Malik Beasley knocks Young down and steps into a floater to give the Bucks a seven-point advantage. Clint Capela was a touch late to the rotation, but Beasley provided a good floater.

In response, Young receives a pick-and-roll switch and attacks, but the rotation from Brook Lopez (who had just been blocked on the previous possession) and contact from Middleton forces an awkward shot and Capela’s attempts to recover the ball float out of bounds.

 

 

The Bucks strike again, with Lillard receiving a double screen from Middleton and Lopez, with the Middleton screen removing Murray out of the equation on Lillard. Capela is forced to rotate onto Lillard on the perimeter — which is always fraught with peril — and gets the give-and-go with Antetokounmpo to shed Capela, and with Hunter monitoring Lopez on the roll (which he absolutely must), it opens up an easy route for Lillard to dunk:

The Hawks choose to keep pushing instead of calling a timeout, and Murray gets into the lane after a pick-and-roll with Capela, but the runner is well contested by Lopez, and the shot — as does the attempt to keep the ball in play — is missed. In response, Lillard goes pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo, causing Capela to rotate and leaving Lopez in position beneath the rim. And while De’Andre Hunter tries to get the ball back. Lopez is able to dig it out and adjust to score at the hoop, giving the Bucks their highest lead of the game, 11 points.

With less than 30 seconds remaining, the game is effectively gone, with the Bucks flipping the ball over a beaten Atlanta defense to Beasley in the corner for the three to cap off the run.

In the end, despite having it going at various points throughout the game, the Hawks shot 29% in the fourth quarter. Young (0-of-5), Murray (2-of-5), and Bogdan Bogdanovic (1-of-5) all struggled to rediscover their early game rhythms, with Bey’s eight points leading the way in the fourth. Hunter couldn’t regain his form after the first quarter, and that was the end of the Hawks’ scorers. The Bucks, on the other hand, shot 60% in the final period.

“Good effort, did all the really good things through the course of the game (but) didn’t finish well and it showed at the end,” Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said.

 

 

“They’re a tough team and coming down to the wire it only takes a few plays for things not to go your way,” he said. A pair of missed shots, followed by a few of plays that go their way, and the lead can quickly grow from one to seven. That’s what I believe happened late in the game; it’s difficult to come back against a good squad like that when you give them the lead so late in the game. We’ll take what we can from it.”

Snyder described the last run’s numerous facets, including Lillard’s performance, the Hawks’ offense, and how giving baskets and taking the ball away from under the rim put pressure on their offensive.

“There [are] multipliers,” Snyder remarked of the 13-2 victory. “We didn’t make a couple of clean looks.” Dame did some things even while we were fully guarded. When we take the ball out of the net, it just puts more pressure on us to have offensive possessions where we can get to the line, grab an offensive rebound, and not have to rely on making a shot.”

“We were easier to guard during that stretch,” added Snyder of the run. “Like I said, we didn’t get to the line. We had tough shots, I thought they got better shots than we did that last four minutes. Sometimes those add up to an offensive rebound, free throws, slows the game down, sets your defense. They’re a mature team. We need to keep learning how to do that, particularly late in the game. We’ve done that, we’ve absolutely done that, we just didn’t do that tonight.”

 

 

The Hawks had put themselves in the bonus with over five minutes to go in the fourth but inside the last five minutes never got back to the free throw line. They did still edge the Bucks at the line (16 makes to the Bucks’ 12) but this did feel like a missed opportunity for the Hawks.

Furthermore, in the fourth, the Hawks used both Capela and Okongwu together. When asked about this after the game, Snyder stated that the matchup and availability of minutes dictate when the Hawks can use this lineup.

“Defensively, playing Damian Lillard in pick-and-roll forces you to be up on the floor, so our backline is bigger,” Snyder said of his decision to start Capela and Okongwu. “Usually, one of them is up in pick-and-roll defense, and it allows us to invert and have more protection at the rim with more size, even if Lopez is spaced.” It’s more tough when our backline is smaller. It’s about making time for those guys to play together. There are occasions in the game when that is permissible, and there are others when it pays defensive dividends. It was one of those nights tonight.”

The two-man lineup of Capela and Okongwu has played just 15 minutes together and is a -10 in those minutes (the only two-man lineups for the Hawks that have played fewer minutes are Trent Forrest-Bruno Fernando and Trent Forrest-Garrison Mathews), but there were some positive flashes of this pairing last night, and with Jalen Johnson out for the foreseeable future, it could be something we see more of, depending on the matchup.

Despite shooting 4-of-13, Capela grabbed 17 rebounds and eight offensive rebounds. The field goal % is a touch misleading because Capela missed a few bunnies for chances he created on his own, but he really stepped up defensively and enjoyed this terrific play on both ends with the block on one and the dunk on the other:

The Hawks have struggled at times on the glass with Johnson going down but while the Bucks edged the rebounding battle 44-40, their second chance scoring was limited with just eight offensive rebounds compared to the Hawks’ 15.

“He played really great for us,” said Young of Capela. “It always sucks not being able to celebrate certain performances like that, especially when he rebounded the way he did, battled all night with the other bigs in the game. It’s tough with Jalen being out, we lose a lot of rebounding and size, teams are going to be crashing the glass even more on us. We’ve got to help Clint, he did a really good job helping us and cleaning up a lot of the boards for us tonight.”

Despite cooling off at an unfortunate time in the fourth quarter, Young and Murray had it going in this game. Young scored 32 points on 13-of-28 shooting and 5-of-13 from three, with Murray scoring 30 points on 12-of-19 shooting on 4-of-6 shooting.

With Lopez on the court the Bucks play a lot of drop coverage. Lopez is one of the league leader in shots blocked and with his size he can contest well too, affording him the luxury to drop back and then step up to challenge shots in the lane. However, this drop in coverage works to the strengths of Murray’s mid-range game and Young’s floater game, both of which were in fine supply last night.

“We just know the type of defense they bring,” said Young of he and Murray’s success. “With Brook in there, he’s usually in drop (coverage), usually at the rim and just trying to contest shots late. We knew what kind of defense they’d be in.”

For the game, the Hawks shot 44.6% from the field and this would be fine if the Bucks hadn’t shot 59.6% from the field themselves. Their damage was done in transition where they scored 21 points, contributing to 60 points in the paint. In the first half especially, the Bucks caught the Hawks napping setting up their defense and punished them for it and getting to the rim with ease.

All things considered, the Hawks put up a good effort here, just falling away at the end to one of the NBA’s better teams. At the end of a five-game road trip, you can’t ask for a ton more. On the night it was certainly winnable, and had Young, Murray and Bogdanovic not combined for 3-of-15 in the fourth who knows which way it could have gone.

For the trip as a whole, the Hawks went 2-3. In short, they won the games they were supposed to in Washington and San Antonio, and lost the games you might have expected them to in Boston, Cleveland and Milwaukee. It’s been quite a trip, and the Hawks are ready to return to Atlanta.

“This was a long road trip, I know everyone is ready to get back home,” said Young postgame.

However, they may get used to the road for another while yet — they may return to Atlanta now, but six of their nine games are back on the road.

The Hawks (9-10) return to Atlanta where they have a number of days to recover while the In-Season Tournament knockout rounds take place. Their next game takes place on Wednesday night against the Brooklyn Nets (10-9) who will similarly enjoy the same time off having just knocked off the hottest team in the NBA, the Orlando Magic, with 42 points from Mikal Bridges (26 of those in the first quarter), who was excellent against the Hawks in their last meeting.