Miami Heat 106 Atlanta Hawks 85

Boxscore

Gameflow

Highlights

Team	Poss	Off Eff	eFG%	FT Rate	OR%	TO%
MIA	87	1.218	61.3	27.9	26.7	18.4
ATL	87	0.977	46.2	15.2	10.6	6.9

Possible themes for this game recap...

• The Atlanta Hawks struggle mightily against quality opposition.
• The Atlanta Hawks: competitive as long as their jump shots go in. They were 4-9 outside of 16 feet, including a Hinrich three-pointer in the first quarter and trailed by four. They missed their next 12 shots from that range, a streak broken, with the starters already ensconced on the bench, by Jeff Teague's jumper with 4:24 left in the third quarter that cut the Miami lead to 29.
• Discern and describe the je ne sais quoi that Semih Erden and Erick Dampier share that necessitates starting Atlanta's third-best center against them.
• Josh Smith's knee brace: the perfect accessory for defending LeBron James?
• Over the last 18 games, Joe Johnson has scored 269 points on 267 shots.
• The Hawks have outscored their opponents by three points, or 0.0437 points per game, this season.
• Congratulate everyone who answered "three games later" when asked "When will Jeff Teague fall out of the rotation again following his excellent performance against Portland?"
• Hilton Armstrong: the biggest Mario West you'll ever see.
• Again lament that Josh Powell dresses (but does not play) and Pape Sy does not dress and thus does not get the opportunity to make garbage time (more than 16-and-a-half minutes of it by my count) interesting.
• Admit that after writing more than 300 game recaps about this team over the last four seasons, there may be nights (and mornings after) where the dire predictability of a loss overwhelms one's analytical capacity and just get to the dispiriting quotes, not that the Hawks offered much in that respect, either.

Larry Drew:

"Miami’s a solid defensive team. They do a great job, particularly on the first side of the offense. You have to force them to shift their defense and then you have to attack. We didn’t do that. Once the ball came out, we settled again for threes."

I don't see how starting Jason Collins is going to diminish Miami's commitment to defending the strong side nor how attempting 9 three-pointers (out of 57 field goal attempts) through three quarters gets anywhere near explaining why the Hawks were destroyed in their own building.

As with Mike Woodson, it's not that I expect Larry Drew to get to the heart of the matter through brutal honesty in his post-game press conferences but because the obvious problems persist and the same platitudes get rolled out night after night, there's no sane response but to treat the post game quotes as serious, if unconvincing, comment

Damien Wilkins, indirectly discussing Josh Smith being assigned the job of defending LeBron James:

"To me, it felt or seemed like we were conceding the fact that [James] was making shots. He was way too comfortable pulling up for jump shots, coming down and just doing whatever he wanted to do, just showing way too much respect. … I think we could have done a better job showing a little bit more resistance."

Al Horford:

"We’re going through a real rough patch right now. We’re going to keep fighting and we have to figure it out."

Per Ken Sugiura this was the 17th time this season that the Hawks lost by 10 or more points. Maybe the 17th time will be charm, Al.