| Team | Poss | Off Eff | eFG% | FT Rate | OR% | TO% |
| MEM | 90.5 | 1.071 | 52.0 | 28.9 | 35.1 | 22.1 |
| ATL | 90.5 | 1.215 | 51.6 | 15.1 | 39.6 | 15.5 |
The Hawks changed it up a bit tonight, playing a sloppy offensive first quarter before their second unit overwhelmed a lesser team's second unit in the second quarter creating momentum that the first unit maintained through the end of the third quarter* before a summer league game** broke out over the final eight minutes allowing Memphis to keep the final margin more respectable than Toronto or New Jersey or Chicago managed.
Atlanta's offense isn't going to have any problems with a team that neither pressures the ball*** in the half-court nor gets back defensively in transition. It's tempting not to take much away from another game against fundamentally uncompetitive opposition but don't forget that the current five-game winning streak began with the Hawks winning a far different kind of game in Dallas.
As in the win in Dallas, Joe Johnson was excellent tonight. Unlike the Dallas game, he had plenty of help. The post rotation clearly outplayed their counterparts. Jeff Teague was promising. Jamal Crawford was solid and Maurice Evans again played as if he's trying to usurp Jamal Crawford's Sixth Man of the Year campaign.
*Hawks 61 Grizzlies 42 over the middle two quarters
**Randolph Morris and Othello Hunter grabbed six offensive rebounds but just one of five possible defensive rebounds over the final 7:50. Sam Young scored 14 of his 18 in the final 8:22 after going 2-7 from the floor with three turnovers against NBA competition.
***UPDATE (10:42pm): Lack of ball pressure doesn't adequately describe the failings of the Memphis defense. There's no help defense either. Pretty much any Hawk (Josh Smith and Zaza Pachulia included) could get wherever they wanted off the dribble without having to deal with a second defender.
2 comments:
I know you can't take much from these games individually. But when you take this soft block of games as a whole, it's a pretty good sign that we've been blowing these teams out. Last year I think we'd have lost at least one of these games.
There is no doubt about this batch of difficult/pointless to analyze games is another indicator that this is a really good team.
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