Suns 88 Hawks 80

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Highlights

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
ATL	89	0.899	41.4	22.4	20	16.8
PHX	89	0.988	46.3	14.6	34.1	19.1

30 second half points against the league's 29th-stingiest defense? One of those things that can happen on the road? An example of the difference between playing the slightly above average Suns and the dismantled Clippers? Just a good night for the "under" bettors? New rims installed at US Airways Center over the break? Or, another manifestation of the lack of Plan B, the familiar lack of ball movement* simply thrown into sharper than normal relief by Mike Woodson's decision to use just six players in the second half while Phoenix's second half run was courtesy of a lineup of Dragic, Richardson, Dudley, Amundson, and Frye?

*13 made field goals, 3 assists for the Hawks in the second half

Mike Woodson used but six guys to tally those 30 points despite only two of the six (Josh Smith and Joe Johnson) having played well in the first half and none of them playing well at any point* in the second half.

• Marvin Williams scored two points, grabbed one rebound, and committed two turnovers in 16:52.
• Mike Bibby was 0-4 from the floor, committed two turnovers and didn't register an assist in 17:50.
• Josh Smith scored 21 points through three quarters. He scored 0 in 9:55 of playing time in the fourth quarter.
• Al Horford didn't score in the final 10:56 of the game, though he did, to his credit, grab half of Atlanta's eight fourth quarter rebounds.
• Joe Johnson scored 17 points through three quarters. He made a single bucket in the fourth, a runner with 5:24 left that cut Phoenix's lead to 11. Did he attempt any free throws in the fourth quarter? Of course he did not.
  
• Jamal Crawford scored 8 of Atlanta's 14 fourth quarter points but those were Atlanta's final 8 points, spread out over the final 4:48 with the Hawks down at least nine prior to each bucket.

*Horford's back-to-back buckets to open the fourth quarter were nice but his other good offensive work was undone by coming up empty on all four of his fourth quarter free throw attempts.

Mike Woodson on his short second half rotation:

"I decided to go that route. I learned a little something tonight because that won’t happen again."

Jamal Crawford:

"Maybe we lost focus a little bit and it caught up with us."

Josh Smith:

"We just got outplayed, bottom line."

Al Horford:

"We were not doing enough to get stops when we needed them. We were not being aggressive enough in the fourth quarter."

Joe Johnson:

"When our offense wasn't working in the fourth, it seems like we gave up defensively as well. That's not a sign of a good team. We're better than that."

Phoenix scored 18 points on 20 fourth quarter possessions. They scored on 10 of those 20 possessions. Three of their 10 fourth quarter scores (Including twice in the five straight possessions on which Phoenix scored early in the fourth quarter. A poor defensive stretch, to be sure, but at its conclusion there was still 7:39 remaining in the game.) came courtesy of an offensive rebound. The Hawks didn't give up defensively. They were slightly worse than normal on the defensive glass for a short stretch and were consistently (and collectively) useless offensively for the entire second half.

Mike Woodson:

"I thought our offense hurt us tonight. It really put us behind. We ended up with 12 assists and we missed a lot of good shots and a lot of our shots were hurried shots."