Atlanta's Losing Streak Continues After Loss to Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets

It was a battle of two teams that were on three-game losing streaks tonight in State Farm Arena. The Hawks have not been playing well for a couple of weeks, but the defending champion Denver Nuggets have surprisingly lost three in a row and two-time MVP Nikola Jokic has had two poor games in a row shooting the ball. He was going to be going up against a Hawks team that has one of the worst defenses in the NBA and a team that was down two starters.

De'Andre Hunter came into the day listed as questionable on the injury report but was ruled out a couple of hours before the game began. Garrison Matthews got the start in place of Hunter and he was alongside Trae Young, Dejounte Murray, Saddiq Bey, and Clint Capela.

The starters for Denver were Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr, Aaron Gordon, and Jokic.

With the Hawks down two starters, I thought that Bogdan Bogdanovic was going to play a lot of minutes tonight and one thing was certain, Atlanta was going to have to win the minutes in which Jokic was not on the floor. I thought one advantage the Hawks still might have on the Nuggets was the strength of their bench, but Denver's bench was one of the stories of the first half.

The first quarter went about as well as the Hawks could have hoped for though.

The defense was solid out of the gates for the Hawks and the three-point shot was falling for Atlanta and not for Denver. Jokic did not dominate when he was on the floor and the Hawks offense was off to a great start. They led 36-28 after the first and Young led the way with nine points and four assists. Bogdanovic played big minutes and scored nine points off the bench.

Overall, the Hawks shot 61.9% from the field in the first quarter and 60% from three. Denver shot 44.4% from the field, but only 25% from three. Jokic had eight points, two rebounds, and one assist. The Nuggets were getting most of their work done in the paint, outscoring Atlanta 18-12.

In the second quarter, the Hawks saw their lead start to slowly slip away and Jokic was not the main reason why. Julian Strawther came off the bench and had 19 points in the first half and hit five of his seven three-point attempts. The Nuggets outscored the Hawks 37-26 in the second quarter and led Atlanta 65-62 at the half.

Atlanta shot 51.1% from the field and 42.9% from three. Young had 14 points and five assists, while Bogdanovic led the team in scoring with 16. He played close to 17 minutes in the first half.

Denver shot 55.1% from the field in the first half and 40% from three. Strawther led the way with 19 points and Jokic had 12 points, three rebounds, and six assists.

Since the first quarter, Denver had seized control of the game. After going up by three at the half, the Nuggets started the third quarter on a 17-9 run to take an 11-point lead with six minutes to go in the third quarter.

It would only get worse from there. The Nuggets had another dominant quarter, outscoring the Hawks 39-24 and leading by 18 at the start of the fourth quarter.

The worst part of the third quarter was Young getting ejected. He was arguing calls and picked up a technical foul, which led to Quin Snyder arguing trying to find out why the ref gave him one and Snyder picked up one as well. Young continued to argue the call, received a second technical and was ejected. Any hope of an Atlanta comeback more or less died with Young being ejected.

To their credit, Atlanta battled back from a big deficit to cut the lead to seven points with 1:45 to go in the game. However, Jokic knocked down a pair of free throws to get a more comfortable lead for the Nuggets.

Or so it seemed.

Atlanta kept battling back and Bogdanovic would not let this go quietly. He hit his tenth three of the game and the crowd went nuts. Down five and under a minute left, Atlanta got a turnover, and a foul sent Bey to the line. He split the pair and the Nuggets got the ball back.

The Hawks could not complete the miraculous comeback and lost their fourth straight game, dropping to 9-13 for the season.

For the game, Atlanta shot 45.8% from the floor and 38.6% from three. Bogdanovic had 40 points, including 10 three-pointers. Murray had 21 and Bey had 16.

Denver finished the night shooting 53.4% from the field and 41.4% from three. Jokic finished 25 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists. Murray had 29 points and Strawther had 22 off the bench.

Atlanta will head to Toronto for back-to-back games on the road against the Raptors and then head to Cleveland for another road game vs the Cavs.

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