| 28 April 2010
(Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Milwaukee Bucks 91, Atlanta Hawks 87
It’s dinnertime at the Chen household, and today’s special is an endless buffet of crow. I admit that I didn’t give the Bucks much of a chance in this series, if any at all. I underestimated Brandon Jennings ability to facilitate an offense, but also take over a game scoring-wise whenever he wants. I discounted the energy and hustle that Ersan Ilyasova brings off the bench. I didn’t recognize the huge advantage in coaching that Scott Skiles brings to the Bucks over Mike Woodson. And finally, I forgot that for about 15 minutes per game at home and the entire game on the road, the Hawks barely resemble higher functioning organisms on the court.
An obvious turning point in this series was when the Bucks returned to Milwaukee and blew the Hawks out of the water in Game Three, but really the X-factor was their defensive switch of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute onto Josh Smith. In games One and Two, LRMaM was assigned to Joe Johnson, and Smith absolutely punished whomever was guarding him in the post, be it Carlos Delfino, Ersan Ilyasova, or (inexplicably) Jerry Stackhouse. Since then, he has struggled to figure into the Hawks offense at all, as LRMaM’s tenacious defense combined with Atlanta’s seeming inability to execute any sort of post-entry play results in Smith going several minutes at a time without touching the ball. That trend continued tonight, as he only managed five points, and perhaps more importantly, only five shots and one free throw attempt.
To say that the Hawks offense was stagnant in the first half would be a gross understatement. Despite their numerous size advantages on the block, the Hawks acted like the only play that Mike Woodson taught them was an isolation leading to a pull-up contested jumper. Honestly, it seemed like they were limiting themselves to a maximum of one pass per offensive possession. Once that was used up, that player would have to create his own shot, regardless of how long the odds of doing so would be.
Maybe that’s a little unfair. Al Horford established himself fairly well in the post the few times the Hawks guards found him there. He was intent on playing what commentators Matt Devlin and Kevin McHale called, “Bully Ball,” which basically meant catching it in the paint and then smashing into his defender until he has enough room to throw up a quick hook. This strategy was fairly successful against Ilyasova, but horribly forced against Kurt Thomas, who never gave up an inch. Another bright spot in the first half was the play of Marvin Williams. I’m pretty sure that Williams might be the only Hawk who knows that he isn’t able to create his own shot against most defenders, so we saw him constantly finding lanes, using screens, and cutting all over the court. His touches were definitely limited, but he made them count, finishing the half with nine points on 4/5 shooting, all of them lay-ups, dunks, or wide open jumpers.
The Bucks saw similar struggles of their own on offense in the first half. Brandon Jennings exploded with 12 straight points on his own in the first quarter, but the rest of the Bucks shot under 40% for the half. As invisible as Josh Smith was on the offensive end, he certainly made himself known on defense, challenging every single lay-up attempt and grabbing rebounds like nobody’s business. When it was all said and done, the Hawks led by three at halftime, and I was running to get a pot of coffee brewing.
I don’t know what Mike Woodson said at halftime, but the Hawks came out guns blazing in the third quarter. Their offense was much more fluid, building off of stifling defense, with which the Hawks forced six turnovers in the quarter, almost all of them leading to easy points on the other end. Joe Johnson, who only scraped up two points in the first half, caught fire after a confidence-boosting drive and slam. Al Horford asserted his will down low as usual, and seemed to be borderline unguardable when catching the ball in the post with position. Finally, Marvin Williams played like a man possessed, like he wanted to prove that Atlanta didn’t make an egregiously huge mistake in picking him in front of both Deron Williams and Chris Paul in the 2005 draft. He continued his display of efficiency that he showed in the first half by adding another 13 points on 4/5 shooting and 5/5 free throws in the third quarter, giving him a ridiculous 87% True Shooting Percentage for the game. His only miss in the quarter came, of course, on a wide-open lay-up attempt. Behind this newfound exuberance, the Hawks were able to build up a 13-point lead, and it seemed like their home-court dominance would continue.
But then, seemingly without reason, Mike Woodson called a timeout midway through the third quarter and subbed in Maurice Evans for the aforementioned Marvin Williams, who led all players in scoring at the time with 22 points despite only taking 10 shots. Yes, I realize that this coincided with Scott Skiles going extremely small with a line up of Jennings, Ridnour, Salmons, LRMaM, and Ilyasova, but Williams was their best offensive player and now was being guarded by Luke Ridnour on the block. How could he not want to exploit that huge size mismatch? With Evans in, the Hawks reverted back to relying completely on isolation sets on offense, with Evans himself being victimized by a few costly turnovers. Ridnour and Ilyasova led an offensive surge for the Bucks as they quickly whittled into that previously daunting Hawks lead.
In the fourth quarter, the Hawks were the ones who looked like deer caught in the headlights. The Bucks attacked the basket non-stop, drawing fouls left and right. In contrast, the Hawks again started settling for long jump shots, especially Jamal Crawford who seemed to try to get himself out of his slump by taking a shot every single time he touched the ball regardless of what the defense showed. This led to the Bucks garnering a huge 17-0 advantage in free throw attempts during in the last quarter. Much of this was by John Salmons, who had a quiet showing in the rest of the game, but whose aggressive play in the fourth caused Joe Johnson to foul out. Despite his performance earlier in the game, Marvin Williams rarely touched the ball and did not get another shot attempt in the game. Josh Smith was nowhere to be found on offense, only managing two shots in the quarter, one of them the kind of long three-point attempt that we thought he had nixed from his game. I hate to use clichés, but at the end, the Bucks just wanted it more at the end, and that’s why they won.
Why the Bucks won this game:
We knew that everyone on the Bucks had to show up in order for them to overcome the huge disadvantage they faced in talent against this Atlanta Hawks team, and they did. Scott Skiles deserves a lot of credit for getting these guys to play as well as they have, especially the role players. As good as Brandon Jennings and John Salmons are, this team would be nowhere without the contributions of Ridnour, Ilyasova, and Delfino, who never seem to run out of energy and are constantly cutting, diving for loose balls, and hitting huge shots. The defensive ability of Luc Richard Mbah a Moute made life unbearable for Josh Smith for the entire game. Finally, Kurt Thomas may not have filled the stat sheet by any means (0-1, 0 points, 6 rebounds, 0 blocks), but his effect on Al Horford could be seen every single possession.
Why the Hawks lost this game:
Kevin Arnovitz of Clipperblog and TrueHoop once said (On Jared Wade’s incomparable “Talking About Practice” Podcast), “The guys who don’t excel in this league despite having really freaky athletic gifts often don’t realize their limitations vis-à-vis the guys that are probably a little better than them... That’s ultimately how you suck at something. You take an activity you’re not good at, and you do a lot of it, and you suck. It’s a really good way to be really inefficient.” Obviously, the Atlanta Hawks don’t suck, but they are constantly forgetting their own strengths, and fall into the trap of playing inefficient basketball into the hands of their opponents. They have enough talent that they can get away with it most of the time, but against a well-coached, playoff-caliber team like the Bucks, it will really hurt them. Bibby, Smith, Crawford, and Johnson combined to shoot 13-47 (27.6%) tonight, with an especially abysmal 4-18 (22.2%) performance by Crawford. The Bucks played stifling defense, but a lot of that was a result of the Hawks taking absolutely terrible shots. When the Bucks took game 3, I wrote it off as the Hawks being a terrible road team and not taking the Bucks seriously after blowing them out in the first two games. Now, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Skiles has made the necessary game-to-game adjustments to get the Hawks to play exactly how he wants them to.
Looking forward to game 6:
Again, I’m really sorry for not believing in this Bucks team coming into the series, but they’ve made a firm believer in me. Except for in the third quarter of today’s game, the Bucks have completely and thoroughly outplayed the Hawks throughout each of the last three games of the series. Maybe the Hawks will step it up with their playoff lives on the line, but at the same time, I have a feeling that Joe Johnson and Jamal Crawford will develop a hero complex and shoot them out of the game. Ultimately, I feel like the Bucks, fueled by their home crowd, have a very good chance to end the series. Fear the deer.
Prediction: Close game throughout, but Bucks close it out in the end
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
