Hawks Sweep Back-to-Back With Win Over Trail Blazers

Finding consistency has been among the Hawks’ biggest challenges this season, but on Saturday night, they seamlessly carried Friday’s offensive momentum into Saturday night with a 129-117 win over the Trail Blazers. It was just the second time in 11 tries that the Hawks have won on the second night of a back-to-back, and the first time all season they have won by double-digits in consecutive games. Atlanta scored 1.21 points per possession -- its seventh-best output of the year -- received balanced scoring contributions for the second consecutive game, and moved the ball crisply against a vulnerable defense.

Like the Nets, Portland employed a deep drop coverage in the pick-and-roll against Trae Young, bringing its guards over the top of ball screens while Hassan Whiteside towered in the paint to take away the rim. Atlanta, however, wasn’t deterred by Whiteside or his three blocked shots -- the Hawks did most of their work from the outside, anyway. While they were effective in limiting Young’s 3-point shooting (1-of-8 from deep), the Blazers let other Hawks beat them as they struggled to track multiple threats at once. Three Hawks registered over 20 points (another had 19) and three had at least four assists.

“The guys are finding something that’s pretty special with the ball movement,” Lloyd Pierce said. “We moved their defense, we got the shot we wanted. … We just had to continue to put pressure on them and find a way to try and get stops.”

Atlanta totaled 34 assists as a team, including 15 from Young, which created open looks for the team’s best shooters. The Hawks not only compiled a smarter shot profile than Portland, but hit their attempts at a far better rate. Nearly half of Atlanta’s shots came from beyond the 3-point line, and for the second straight game, more than 43 percent of those looks went down (despite four air-balls in the first half). The Hawks didn’t get to the rim often, but shot a sterling 17-of-21 when they did, and created a massive edge in transition with Young pushing the tempo. “I just think he’s doing a really good job of surveying the game, seeing what they’re giving us, and then just taking advantage of it with the pass,” Pierce said of his point guard.

This game did not start smoothly for either team, but the Hawks scored 84 points in the middle two quarters to turn a close slog into a runaway win. Young finished with 25 points to lead the Hawks in scoring while John Collins added 24 points and 10 rebounds on 9-of-14 shooting. It took only 13 shot attempts for De’Andre Hunter to bottle 22 points and a team-high six made triples, and Kevin Huerter (19 points, eight assists, one turnover, two air-balls) closed out February with one of his better all-around games of the month.

“Really both nights I think we were shooting the ball from 3 really well,” Huerter said. “When you move the ball well, when you see our scoring is balanced really across the board and we have a lot of different guys making 3s, we’re tough to guard.”

The contest became chippy in the middle stages as the Blazers became increasingly frustrated with the officiating and its down defensive performance. Terry Stotts and Hassan Whiteside received technical fouls for complaining and taunting, respectively. Tensions between Young and Trevor Ariza came to a head in the third quarter, when Ariza committed a flagrant foul along the right sideline and Young responded by staring him down after a floater a few plays later. “Just competitiveness,” Young said of his exchanges with Ariza. “It was just competitive in that third quarter and it’s fun to play that way too sometimes, so it’s good.”

The Blazers could make a fairly compelling case for Damian Lillard’s MVP candidacy using the film of Saturday’s first half. This is not a team constructed to win NBA basketball games without its best player, and the offense struggled even against the Hawks. Lillard bends opposing defenses to a degree few in NBA history ever have and quite literally opens up the floor for his teammates. He is the hub of Portland’s offense, and his teammates spent their Saturday evening looking for something to latch onto.

The Blazers scored just 1.04 points per possession in the first half before a highly efficient third quarter, but couldn’t manufacture enough baskets when it mattered. By failing to generate shots at the rim and from beyond the arc, Portland put itself at a significant disadvantage against the scorching Hawks. Nearly a fifth of the Blazers’ shots came between 14 feet and the 3-point line, per Cleaning the Glass, but they connected on less than 38 percent of those looks and finished the game with just 14 assists. When a team casts its lot with those types of shots, it risks falling into the kinds of dry spells Portland did tonight.

“They didn’t have a whole lot of assists tonight,” Pierce said. “If they’re not making us work with the ball movement, it’s just trying to be solid, not overreacting to CJ or ‘Melo getting going. We know they can do it, we know they will do it, but just not having those punishing plays defensively.”

CJ McCollum did his best to guide a rudderless offense with 35 points and five assists, and Hassan Whiteside pitched in 21 points on nine made field goals -- each less memorable than the last. Even then, Terry Stotts’ crew struggled just to get off the ground. Ariza went silent after his collision with Young and Carmelo Anthony (12 points on 13 shots) did the Hawks quite a favor by constantly posting up and isolating against like-sized defenders. This team misses Lillard (and Jusuf Nurkić) badly, and Saturday’s effort won’t be enough to survive in an increasingly tight playoff race.

One of Portland’s competitors for the eighth seed in the Western Conference, the Memphis Grizzlies, will visit Atlanta on Monday to wrap up the four-game homestand. The Hawks have a chance to extend their winning streak to a season-high three (!) games and capture their 20th win of the season before a three-day break in the schedule. Above all, Monday will provide an opportunity for Atlanta to keep its momentum moving forward and, perhaps, finally find some consistency.

“Consistency is the key, and that’s always gonna be the key for us. Can we keep it up? Can we continue to share the basketball, move the basketball that way?” Pierce said. “But what a great effort by our guys tonight.”