Watch the Hawks hit a franchise-record 20 3-pointers and crush the Kings
Let us never consider the Atlanta Hawks to be impolite or ungracious hosts. They did the Sacramento Kings the kindness of allowing them to hang around for a full eight minutes on Monday night before unleashing the hounds. How very civil of them.
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After dropping Saturday night’s matchup with the Philadelphia 76ers thanks in part to coach Mike Budenholzer’s decision to rest Paul Millsap, Kyle Korver and DeMarre Carroll on the second night of a back-to-back, the Hawks rediscovered their Kingslaying form on Monday, hammering visiting Sacramento, 130-105, to get back on the right side of the ledger.
A Rudy Gay 3-pointer drew Sacramento within two points at 20-18 with 4:20 left in the opening frame. That was quite close enough for the Hawks’ taste, as Atlanta closed the frame on a 13-2 run before pushing their lead to 17 points on a Dennis Schröder to Mike Scott alley-oop three minutes into the second quarter, and running away with the contest on the strength of a franchise-record 20 3-pointers on 36 attempts.
The outcome was, perhaps, to be expected, considering the Kings entered Philips Arena allowing more 3-point attempts per game (24.4) than any team besides their hosts (26.2 for Atlanta), while the Hawks ranked eighth in the league in attempts (25.8 per game) and second in accuracy (38.2 percent) behind only the Golden State Warriors. And yet, expecting something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not blown away by what it actually looks like in real life. Behold the deluge:
Seven Hawks connected from long-range on Monday, led (naturally) by league-leading 3-point marksman Kyle Korver, who’d been slumping a bit since the All-Star break but looked refreshed after his weekend rest, going 6-for-8 from deep on his way to 20 points in 31 minutes, and swingman DeMarre Carroll, who shot 4-for-9 from beyond the arc to chip in 20 points along with five rebounds and three assists in 29 minutes.
The 20 triples surpassed Atlanta’s old high-water mark of 19, set in December of 1996, and also represented an NBA season-high, topping the 19 that the Golden State Warriors made during Stephen Curry’s 51-point explosion and the Cleveland Cavaliers drained en route to a 127-94 win over the Hawks back in November.
As strong as the Hawks’ 55.6 percent mark from long distance was, they actually shot even better overall as a team against the Kings’ dire defense, making 53 of 88 field goals, a scintillating 60.2 percent clip. Atlanta logged direct assists on 42 of those 53 makes. That, too, is an NBA season-high, besting the 41 helpers that the Los Angeles Clippers logged in blowing out the Brooklyn Nets on Jan. 22.
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The Hawks set team season-highs for points in a game (130), half (76 before intermission) and quarter (43, in the second, where the Kings lost the plot) in the win, which improved them to 50-13 on the season and marked the first time in franchise history that Atlanta has been the NBA’s first team to the 50-win plateau. (The Warriors would join them later Monday after dispatching the Phoenix Suns.)
The ball movement, the shot-making, the shared defensive responsibility without any evident concern regarding who gets the credit — it’s what’s made Atlanta so good all season long, what’s got them a full 11 games clear of the second-seeded Cavs atop the Eastern Conference, and what had the NBA’s winningest active coach singing their praises after the beatdown wrapped up:
There are a number of different factors contributing to that — Korver’s brilliant shooting and the terror he strikes into opposing defenses, the full-health return of Al Horford (18 points on 9-for-13 shooting, four rebounds, three blocks, two assists in 31 1/2 minutes against the Kings) to serve as a two-way linchpin in the middle, the perennially underrated work of do-it-all forwards Carroll and Paul Millsap (13 points, five assists, three rebounds, two steals in 28 minutes), Budenholzer’s freewheeling read-and-react system, etc.
But perhaps no Hawk has taken a bigger step forward this season than point guard Jeff Teague, a first-time All-Star who’s averaging career-highs in scoring, assists and steals, who trails only the All-NBA triumvirate of Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry and Chris Paul in Player Efficiency Rating among point guards, and who dished a team-high 13 of those 42 dimes on Monday.
To hear his teammates tell it, according to Lee Jenkins of Sports Illustrated, everything the Hawks’ sixth-ranked offense produces starts with the Indiana-by-way-of-Wake-Forest-bred triggerman:
“A lot of guys in this league, after three or four years, they’re kind of done: This is who I am. This is what I’m going to be,” Korver says. “Jeff mentally remade himself. Everything we do starts with him—coming off the screen, sucking in two defenders, reading the pick-and-roll, reading the weakside coverage and making the right decision. He dictates it.”
And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, that’s not how Teague sees it. More from Jenkins:
Teague is watching a clip of the Atlanta offense in a January game at Toronto. In the possession that piques his interest, the Hawks make six passes to five players. The ball switches sides twice yet never hits the ground. Power forward Paul Millsap turns down a five-footer, and Teague turns down an open three so Korver can line up a more open three. “That’s what we do,” Teague says. “That’s who we are. Everybody touches the ball, nobody dances with it, and even if you’ve got a layup, you give it to Kyle Korver.”
It’s a pretty solid strategy, one that has turned the Hawks into one of the most balanced and brutalizing squads in the NBA, and that led to all sorts of record-setting net-scorching at Sacramento’s expense on Monday night.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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