Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Philadelphia 76ers 117 Atlanta Hawks 83

Boxscore

Team
Poss Off Eff eFG% FT Rate OR% TO%
PHI 94
1.245
56.3
35.4
25 10.6
ATL 94 0.883 42.4
11.6
20.8
16

The Hawks got off to a horrible start offensively with Josh Smith taking three jumpers in the first three minutes, Joe Johnson unable to beat Andre Iguodala one-on-one, and no viable third option in Al Horford's absence.

The lack of defensive competence (there's no doubt the Hawks lacked talent and energy on that end tonight) rendered any attempts at making offensive adjustments pointless. Philadelphia scored 33 points on 24 first quarter possessions, then 32 points on 23 second quarter possessions. Even the second half of that sentence threatens to take the game too seriously in its particulars. No need to gild the lily. The game was over three minutes into the second quarter with the Hawks down 23 and no apparent avenue back into the game on either end of the court.

Maybe Al Horford shouldn't miss any more home games.

The Hawks lost a third of their efficiency margin for the season in the 41-point loss to the Hornets. They lost another thirty percent off of what was left of it tonight. Along with any remaining benefit of the doubt.

The Hawks are still a half-game ahead of the Magic for the fourth seed in the East but they'll have to play much better than they have over the last nine games when they've gone 5-4 despite being outscored by more than five points per game, more than eight points per 100 possessions.

A seven-game road trip starts on the 14th with the final two games (at Portland and at Denver) kicking off the 20-day stretch wherein the Hawks play 10 games against teams with winning records plus the make-up game against the Bucks, who have
already beaten the Hawks convincingly in Atlanta this season.

2 comments:

Ryan Murphy said...

I'd love to see a post on the Hawk's efficiency numbers in the games without Joe verses the games without Al. There would be a lot of noise and a very small sample set, but it would be a good indicator of the relative value of the two players to the team.

JJ's contract is a dead horse we'll be beating for another 5 years... if anyone is still a Hawks fan then.

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