Hawks 91 Heat 78

Boxscore

Gameflow

Highlights

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
MIA	82.4	0.95	44.4	39.7	15.2	23
ATL	82.4	1.10	48.6	31	30.6	10.9

Again, I direct your attention first to the Daily Dime where, in the interests of giving Al Horford and Joe Johnson their due, I didn't have room to make more than passing mention of the important roles Mike Bibby, Josh Smith, Flip Murray, and Zaza Pachulia played in the victory. So I'll do that now and I'll do that here.

• Mike Bibby would have played all 48 minutes had he been needed. Bibby didn't have a great shooting day and he didn't put in an atypically strong defensive performance but he lead the team +/- through a combination of not turning the ball over and stretching the Miami defense to create open shots for his teammates.
• Josh Smith will likely never play a perfect game. Even yesterday's 21 point (on 12 shots), 9 rebound, 3 assist, 2 steal performance featured two wholly unnecessary jump shots, a muffed alley-oop dunk, some poor ball-handling, only an intermittent interest in rebounding, and far too much freelancing on defense. His limitations were always obvious and he was still Atlanta's best player over the course of the series.
• Flip Murray didn't take a bad shot even though he didn't make most of the shots he took. He also didn't turn the ball over a single time in 30:10.
• Zaza Pachulia put in a typically useful shift, playing solid position defense and picking up scraps to the tune of eight points and four rebounds while thoroughly exasperating Miami to such a degree that the world got a chance to enjoy Udonis Haslem's back tattoo.

Joe Johnson:

"This is what it looked like in my head. The packed house, the fans going nuts and us playing in meaningful games. This is a special feeling, to be out there in a game like this and knowing that we’re moving on to the next round."

Ira Winderman:

This could have been about the Miami Heat playing without its starting center for a second consecutive game. But it wasn't.

It could have been about the Atlanta Hawks getting back their starting center and finding their 3-point stroke. But it wasn't.

No, it was about this: After 89 regular-season and playoff games, the Heat has only one guard it can trust, one perimeter player it can count on.

The Human Highlight Blog:

When Wade is not hot, there is not much else the rest of the team can do to overcome that. We believe that role players play better at home than on the road, and James Jones (1-5, 0-3) and Mario Chalmers (1-6, 0-2) combined for about (74) minutes to help prove that theory out.

My favorite of Drew's high-caliber victory bullets:

If your team is going to be part of the worst seven game series in basketball, they might as well win it. It makes you feel bad for America but not really care what America thinks.

If Flip and Bibby are playing for one more nice pay day, Zaza is playing like a revolutionary. There may be riots if another team signs him.

CoCo celebrates the return of Joe The Basketball Player.

The Sun-Sentinel's David Hyde:

The simple comparison would be to look at how a young team like Atlanta made the playoffs last year and advanced past the first round this year. But you don't want to use Atlanta as a barometer if you're building a team.

It's a franchise going nowhere until its franchise player, Smith, grows up.

and Terence Moore, bought out by the AJC and now at FanHouse:

You had the Atlanta Hawks and the Miami Heat, wannabes in search of having folks take them seriously beyond a tease. Then you had Joe Johnson and Dwyane Wade, wannabes in search of becoming known for more than just their splendid talent...

offer somewhat contrasting and somewhat overlapping examples of sullen unenlightenment though Hyde's column, to be fair, doesn't necessitate frequent re-reading in an attempt to grasp what point he thinks he's making.