I said that this game would have a pace battle and the Knicks clearly won that battle by being able to set a very slow pace, as the game had a pace of 81! This was by far the slowest paced game of Atlanta on this regular season, so we can easily realize that the Hawks's running game didn't exist on this game. Atlanta scored just 13 fast break points in the game, while shooting 5-12 FG + 0.93 PPP in transitions! Devin Harris's absence was important, as he is one of the quickest guards of the Hawks. Another important factor was the Hawks's bigs not being able against the undersized Knicks's lineups. Josh Smith shot 0-7 FG in the first half! He got affected by that and he wasn't aggressive in the second half, where he didn't have a single FT attempt. Al Horford was also very poor and even though Atlanta decided to try to feed him down low in the fourth quarter, they couldn't do that because they committed too many turnovers down the stretch just trying to make the entry post pass! The Knicks outscored the Hawks by 27-14 in the fourth quarter. The Hawks had seven turnovers in the final quarter and had several defensive breakdowns. At one point, Raymond Felton converted three straight layups and that absolutely killed the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment