Horford, Teague, Carroll push Hawks to Game 5 win, take 3-2 lead on Nets
The Atlanta Hawks rolled up a franchise-record 60 wins behind a balanced attack, crisp ball movement, committed defense and widespread contributions to make up for the lack of a single dominant scorer. In desperate need of a win after dropping two straight games to the Brooklyn Nets, the Hawks got exactly that sort of everybody-chips-in performance, toppling the Nets 107-97 in Wednesday’s Game 5 to take a 3-2 lead in their best-of-seven series and move within one victory of advancing to the second round of the playoffs.
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All five Atlanta starters — a.k.a., the Eastern Conference Player of the Month of January in the Year 2015 A.D. — scored in double figures in the win. They also all logged extended floor time, with DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap and Kyle Korver each topping the 40-minute mark for the second straight game as unreliable second-unit play — most notably from reserve point guard Dennis Schröder, who hasn’t looked comfortable or capable in running the Hawks offense in this series — convinced Coach of the Year Mike Budenholzer to stick with his starters longer than normal in what he clearly felt was a must-win game. (For reference, Korver had just two 40-plus-minute games during the regular season, Millsap had one, and Carroll had none.)
And don’t let the 10-point margin of victory fool you. Budenholzer needed every last second his starters could give on Wednesday, as Brooklyn once again weathered a hot Atlanta start to not only make a game of it, but make everyone in Philips Arena sweat right down to the final minutes.
Lionel Hollins’ club stayed within hailing distance early thanks to dynamite reserve Alan Anderson, who scored a career playoff high 23 points on 9-for-11 shooting, with 16 coming in the first half. And after Atlanta rebuild its lead, the Nets came roaring back behind backup point guard Jarrett Jack, who scored 12 of his 18 points in the final frame and teamed with former Hawks star Joe Johnson (10 of his 18 in the fourth) to bring Brooklyn within just a single point with 4:41 remaining.
“Jarrett Jack’s a great player, man. He just kept making plays, kept them in it,” Hawks center Al Horford told TNT’s David Aldridge after the game. “Coach just told us to keep our composure, to keep playing our game, and that’s what we did.”
The Hawks outscored Brooklyn 17-8 after the Jack floater that made it 90-89, with the flip-side of the Jack coin — his struggles to hold up against quick guards on the defensive end — coming home to roost.
Jeff Teague got loose when Atlanta needed him most, scoring nine points down the stretch to help salt away the win. The jitterbug point guard finished with 20 points on 7-for-14 shooting, a 3-for-6 mark from 3-point land, eight assists, three rebounds, three steals and just two turnovers in 37 minutes of work.
Carroll, the Hawks’ best player in this series, led the way with 24 points on 8-for-15 shooting, seven rebounds, three assists and two steals. Best known for his defensive work on the perimeter, the 28-year-old swingman — who’s about to hit unrestricted free agency and get a substantial raise over the $2.4 million he’s making this season — kept Atlanta’s offense afloat during a second-quarter swoon in which every other Hawk combined to shoot 4-for-17.
But it was Horford — the Hawks’ best player, period — who led the charge both early and late.
After dislocating the pinky finger on his shooting hand in Atlanta’s Game 1 win, Horford has seemed uncomfortable at times unleashing his midrange jumper, arguably the best among NBA big men. This has emboldened Brooklyn counterpart Brook Lopez to sag off Horford on the perimeter, keeping his massive frame closer to the basket to help deter dribble penetration.
Under normal circumstances, sagging off Horford would be a death sentence in the Hawks’ pristinely spaced offense.
“Yeah, but you know what? In this series, I haven’t [made those shots] and he’s been living with that,” Horford told Aldridge. “But tonight, I finally got my rhythm back, and I made shots when I needed to.”
The former Florida star went 3-for-3 from the top of the key en route to scoring a series-best 20 points on 10-for-17 shooting. He added a game-high 15 rebounds, with five coming on the offensive glass, to go with five assists, two steals and two blocks in 34 1/2 minutes.
He also did a stellar job on Nets interior focal point Lopez, who had averaged 21.3 points on 54.2 percent shooting and 11 rebounds per game through the first four contests. Horford made everything tough on Lopez in Game 5, holding him to 15 points on 4-for-13 shooting and keeping him off the boards to the tune of just three rebounds in 39 minutes.
Coming off two games in which they too often stagnated offensively and conceded defensively, Atlanta worked hard to get everybody involved early, with all five Hawks touching the ball on the opening possession and producing an eventual high-low feed for a Horford layup. The big man took charge early, scoring or assisting on Atlanta’s first 10 points to help the Hawks get into an early rhythm.
The Nets, on the other hand, struggled to produce good looks in the early going, opening up just 3-for-13 from the floor and shooting just 33 percent in the first quarter. Brooklyn trailed by 17 after Carroll beat the buzzer with a stepback 3 out of an after-timeout call by Budenholzer:
The Nets pushed right back into the game against the Hawks’ second unit, though, ripping off an 11-0 run to the start the second behind big shots …
… and big drives …
… by the 32-year-old Anderson, who entered Game 5 having made 14 of his 20 field-goal attempts through four games and proceeded to make all six of his first-half tries.
Without the Michigan State product’s burst of offense off the bench, a Nets club that got little out of Game 4 hero Deron Williams (five points on 2-for-8 shooting, six rebounds, six assists, one steal in 32 minutes) or shooting guard Bojan Bogdanovic (seven points on 3-for-8 shooting, two rebounds) would’ve been dead meat on the wing. Thanks to Anderson, Brooklyn trailed by only nine at halftime.
The Hawks got their offense humming again in the third, though, keeping Brooklyn at arm’s length thanks to Kyle Korver — largely dampened by Hollins’ switch-heavy perimeter defensive scheme for these past few games — finally finding some room and making it count:
Atlanta entered the fourth with a 12-point lead. Budenholzer, remembering the problems his reserves had with holding a lead at the start of the second, veered off his substitution pattern and kept his starters out there. It didn’t matter.
Brooklyn still opened the frame with an 11-2 run, forcing turnovers with tough defense and getting a Bogdanovic 3 off a nice feed by Williams, drawing within five points for the first time since early in the first quarter. The Nets kept shutting off the Hawks’ middle pick-and-roll game, forcing late and out-of-sync passes that short-circuited possessions and led to turnovers. That’s when Jack started going nuts, scoring 10 straight points to pull Brooklyn within one.
From there, it was all hands on deck in Atlanta. Teague answered a Jack floater with a pull-up 3, then Carroll got a bucket borne of Horford’s hustle to put the Hawks back up six:
The Nets still wouldn’t die, though, sandwiching a Horford jumper with consecutive triples from Johnson to cut the deficit to two with 2:11 remaining. But Horford came up huge, deterring a Johnson drive and reverse layup try after drawing his former teammate on a switch, before drilling another big jumper on the other end to extend the lead.
On the ensuing Brooklyn possession, Millsap’s help defense led Jack into a turnover, which Teague turned into two points by rejecting a Horford screen and playing right past Jack to the rim for an easy layup.
Following a missed Jack 3, Teague again attacked off the bounce to finish things up:
As was the case in Games 1 and 2 in Atlanta, the Nets put up a valiant effort before falling short. This time, though, it didn’t catch anybody by surprise, and Budenholzer knew he needed to lean hard on his top guns to make sure his team left Wednesday night needing only one more win to close it out.
“It’s the playoffs, so every game becomes more and more important,” Budenholzer said after the game, according to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “We felt like we had to keep that group out there. There have been certain periods of games where we haven’t been as good as we need to be. … Our five guys played well and we stuck with them.”
“This was a game we really wanted to get,” said Korver, who finished with 17 points on 6-for-14 shooting (5-for-12 from 3-point range) to go with five rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block in 40 minutes.
It was hairy at times, but they did get it. Now they’ve got two chances to get one more, and advance to take on the Washington Wizards. Their first shot comes at Barclays Center on Friday 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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