Hawks 108 Nets 84

Boxscore

Gameflow

Highlights

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
ATL	89.2	1.21	54.1	18.8	23.8	7.8
NJ	89.2	0.941	41	25.6	26	17.9

I was off-line much of last night and am ill today. So I'll keep it bulleted and brief before getting to the links.

• The Nets, short-handed themselves, gave a game effort but lack the talent to compete with the Hawks, even a short-handed Hawks team.
• By talent, I mostly mean players who can make shots. The turnovers didn't help but the Nets, Brook Lopez excluded, never looked likely to complete the act of putting the ball in the basket.
  
• Given the Nets' effort and their own short-handedness the ease with which the Hawks separated themselves from the Nets in the second quarter is admirable. Maintaining that separation was impressive.
• Jamal Crawford, Marvin Williams, and Mo Evans ably stepped up in Joe Johnson's absence.
• I don't know why Marvin Williams becomes a better defensive rebounder* in Joe Johnson's absence.
• I don't get playing Jeff Teague alongside Mike Bibby other than as a casualty of the team's campaign to get Jamal Crawford voted Sixth Man of the Year. I don't know that those twelve-and-a-half minutes playing alongside Bibby helped Teague much but I doubt they hurt him, either.
• The Hawks were -3 with both Bibby and Teague on the court. When Crawford replaced Teague in the third quarter, the Hawks led 63-50.

*Sample size: 3 games against bad teams

Mike Woodson:

"There are no ‘gimmes’ in this league. We’ve had games like this where we came out on the other end. I thought our guys came out focused."

Jamal Crawford:

"We are getting better at not giving teams a chance to put together a run and come back."

Woodson on Teague:

"He was OK. Probably a little nervous. He played pretty good. He’s got to work to get better and he will get better. We’ll push him. He played pretty well considering he’s not played a lot of minutes. Not by any measure am I disappointed in his play."

Kiki Vandewghe holds his team to a higher standard than do I:

"It was the first game in a very long time that I just felt like we didn't have our energy."

Mark Ginocchio, Nets Are Scorching:

The Atlanta Hawks are everything the Nets are not: athletic, deep and offensively efficient.

I'm still not tired of the Hawks being on the good end of such comparisons.