Quotes, Notes, and Links: Atlanta Hawks 95 Milwaukee Bucks 74

Gameflow

Highlights

Recap

Mike Woodson:

"A lot of you wrote us off and it’s a shame because, if you understand playoff basketball, anything is possible. These guys didn’t stop believing after that Game 5."

Josh Smith:

"I guess we like a good challenge."

Mike Bibby:

"We never give up. We kept fighting. Everybody counted us out except us."

Alternately...Bibby:

"We kind of took them too easy coming in with the first two games. They played hard and they had us on our heels."

Brandon Jennings:

"I think we did the best we could without [Bogut]. I think we gave Atlanta all we could."

Mike Woodson:

"As we move forward, it has got to stay consistent as far as how we defend and rebound. The only way we got out of this series is defend. We did that in Milwaukee, holding them to 69 points and tonight 74 points. It was our defense that came through for us in this series."

The defense and rebounding the last two games actually exemplified inconsistency. The years of mediocrity are surely more representative of how this team defends and rebounds. Even the entirety of the first round series has to count for something. Case in point: for the series, the Hawks held the Bucks (without Andrew Bogut) to 98.2% of their season average* offensive efficiency. The Hawks' defense in the last two games was impressive but they're also just a week away from allowing the same, limited Bucks team to score 123 and 126 points per 100 possessions in consecutive games.

*The Bucks held the Hawks to 96.5% of their season average offensive efficiency during the series.

About that...Coach?:

"All those people that wrote us off, they don’t dribble one ball up and down that court, they don’t shoot a jump shot, they don’t rebound the ball, they don’t get defensive stops and they surely don’t coach the team. It ain’t about all these people outside our circle. Any team will say that. It’s about the people who go to battle and work in the locker room. I could care less about what you guys write or say."

HawkStr8Talk:

Sorry, but we ALL expected you to win and easily...almost as easily as any other team in the playoffs and so, we were perplexed and dismayed that a team that really didn't have enough bullets in the chamber, but somehow killed 8 players with 2.5 rounds. Maybe this is necessary for motivation, but it reeks of how the psychology of our team is focused in the wrong places. Home Court, Us Against the Press/World, Heart/Leadership, and even how good the Bucks are, which they weren't.

Woodson on Brandon Jennings:

"It’s nice to see a young guy figure it out that early."

Scott Skiles:

"If you get outrebounded by 20 or so rebounds and shoot 32%, it's going to be a tough game to win. We had our opportunity in the series to take it in the home game. They've only lost here eight times and they beat us fair and square. They earned it.

We didn't get great looks and when we did we missed them. Our low-post game - we don't have one - we were relegated to trying to find shots for each other out there and they made that difficult for us."

Luke Ridnour:

"It's tough when everything is coming from the perimeter all the time. You have to give them a lot of credit; their defense was tough. The switching, those big guys are long."

Kelly Dwyer questions the Hawks.