Hawks 117 Bucks 87

Boxscore

Gameflow

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
MIL	96.5	0.90	44.3	21.5	20.8	17.6
ATL	96.5	1.21	61	29.9	18.2	16.6

Everything worked. Marvin Williams returned and looked recovered from his concussion. Luke Ridnour couldn't keep Mike Bibby in front of him. Milwaukee's off-the-ball defense was so poor that Josh Smith could repeatedly cut to the basket unimpeded to receive a Bibby pass before finishing with a dunk. The Bucks couldn't make a two-point shot (20-57 2PTFGA, remove Charlie Villanueva and Malik Allen from the equation and it's even worse: 12-45 2PTFGA) with any regularity. Flip Murray and Maurice Evans took advantage of all of their open looks to score 25 points on 13 shots and 18 points on 8 shots respectively. Add it all up and the Hawks earned a rare blowout victory and the welcome opportunity to rest an overworked backcourt prior to the approaching road slog.

The Hawks play Phoenix at home early Sunday night (late Sunday afternoon?) then play 14 of their next 19 games on the road with two of those 5 home games coming against the Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta's 2008-09 bogey team, the New Jersey Nets. Getting an extra bit of rest for Johnson and Bibby can only help, as would getting everyone healthy but even then the Hawks would do well to scare .500 over that 19-game stretch.

Nothing but good feelings in the Hawks' locker room.

Mike Bibby:

"We finished our work early tonight."

Flip Murray:

"I needed that. I had to get my swagger back."

Joe Johnson:

"We got to the hole a lot. The pick-and-roll worked to perfection."

Heck, on many a possession, Bibby (or Murray) didn't need a pick to get where they wanted to go.

A different, but equally accurate, assessment from Scott Skiles in the visitors' locker room:

"We didn't show up - in any facet of the game."

At Brew Hoop, Frank Madden suspects that Larry Krystowiak showed up to deliver last night's pre-game pep talk to the Bucks.

At The Human Highlight Blog, Jason Walker posits the Bucks as stooges at a party the Hawks threw for themselves.