Quotes, Notes, and Links: Atlanta Hawks 111 Minnesota Timberwolves 105

Boxscore

Gameflow

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Highlights

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
MINN	97	1.082	52.6	29.5	32.4	21.6
ATL	96	1.165	48.1	42.5	35.7	15.6

Technical difficulties have prevented me from watching yesterday's game thus far but the world doesn't run on the schedule of my problems. Nor does it hurt to keep things fresh. Hence today's inversion of Quotes, Notes, and Links and the game recap.

Larry Drew:

"We had ample opportunity to create separation but we made some bad plays and bad decisions."

Michael Cunningham on Josh Smith:

Not surprisingly, Josh was in the middle of lots of good plays and a few bad ones.

Josh took 20 shots and made 10. He countered any critique of his shot selection by pointing out the 10 makes. “We all have our roles, but when I’m open, I have the green light to shoot,” he said.

That’s not exactly how L.D. has explained it. True, he has gone out of his way to say Josh has worked on his shot, but he doesn’t like it when Smoove settles for long jumpers in certain situations, such as . . .

The Hawks leading the T-Wolves 97-89 and Josh threw up a 20-foot airball that Kevin Love rebounded, leading to Corey Brewer’s 3 eight seconds later. That was after Love stole the ball from Josh on Atlanta’s previous possession.

Of course, J.J. didn’t help matters on the Smoove airball by dribbling out most of the shot clock before passing off to Josh.

Al Horford:

"We were a little careless out there with the basketball and not necessarily running our offense like we should have."

Larry Drew:

"I'm not one to make excuses about our team and the way we perform but a part of me has felt, especially after that Milwaukee game [Wednesday], the season kind of caught up with us at that time with our schedule. That's no excuse. We have to come out and we have to play because other teams go through it, too."

Sebastian Telfair:

"They outhustled us. They got second-chance points and rebounds and stuff like that. But our problem tonight was, between me and Kevin and Beasley, we had 15 turnovers. And we're the guys that have the ball in our hands the whole game. That shouldn't happen. Not for us to win."

Ben Polk of A Wolf Among Wolves on a defining stretch of the game:

[E]arlier in the year I speculated about this hypothetical second unit: Ridnour, Johnson, Corey Brewer, Anthony Tolliver and Nikola Pekovic. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? But because of the aforementioned injuries, plus bumps suffered by Ridnour, Pekovic and Wayne Ellington, the Wolves sported this illustrious fivesome in the first half of Sunday’s game in Atlanta: Brewer and Tolliver with Lazar Hayward, Sundiata Gaines and Kosta Koufos. Now, that would be a pretty wicked D-League starting five but it seemed like maybe not a coincidence that the Hawks managed a 21-8 run in the first half, while the Wolves’ starters rested.

Matt Moore (in this instance writing at ProBasketballTalk) on an obvious mis-match in the game:

In fact, there was really only one weak point on the team’s starters: Darko Milicic.

And boy was he bad. 2 points on 1-7 shooting, with 2 assists, 2 rebounds, and 3 blocks with 2 turnovers in 20 minutes, and it was every bit as underwhelming as it sounds. Al Horford, most often matched up with Milicic, went off again for the Hawks with 28 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 blocks. Darko is supposed to be the defensive stalwart on this team, and he was the only starter with a negative +/- worse than -1 (Wes Johnson was just under the line).

Manna from heaven, indeed.

Much more coming throughout this rainy Atlanta day. Check back at your convenience.