Ten observations from the Hawks’ 123-107 loss to the Cavaliers Friday night at Philips Arena:
1. These are the Hawks. On back-to-back nights they lost to a Magic team missing three starters and a Cavaliers team playing with just seven players for most of the game. For the most part, the Hawks have played competitive basketball this season and you cannot say in the current rebuild that they should win any game. However, progress has not occurred these past two games.
“It’s frustrating but it’s the NBA for you,” Kent Bazemore said. “You have to go to the drawing board and see what you can do better. We’ve had so many ups and downs this season. It’s part of it. As a player, you tend to get frustrated because you want what is best for your team and organization.”
2. The Cavaliers used an 18-2 run between the third and fourth quarters to take control of a back-and-forth game. When the decisive run was over, the Cavs were up by 19 points, 101-82. The Hawks never recovered.
“We definitely lost focus,” Bazemore said. “We have to learn to follow directions for 48 minutes. Coaches work tirelessly coming up with a game plan and some nights we go out there and don’t follow it. We’ve got a young team. We have to roll with the punches but it’s frustrating.”
3. It seemed like old times in Philips Arena with Kyle Korver hitting one 3-pointer after another. The former Hawk finished 7 of 13 from behind the arc and a game-high 30 points. Korver hit four straight 3-pointers late the third quarter, including one at the buzzer, that gave the Cavaliers an 15-point lead, 97-82. The Cavs finished the quarter on a 14-2 run, with all but a Tristan Thompson field goal coming from Korver from 3-point range. Korver had 28 points by the end of the third quarter, five more than his season high and three shy of his career-high 31 points.
“I had a lot of really greats years here,” Korver said. “Probably the best of my career were here. I have a lot of friends in this city but it wasn’t any added fuel.”
4. A day after a major makeover at the NBA trade deadline, the Cavaliers had 10 available players, including two two-way players called up for the game. The Cavaliers traded six players at the deadline and the four players they got in return were not available. Surrounding LeBron James in the starting lineup were Cedi Osman, J.R. Smith, Jose Calderon and Thompson. Asked before the game whether he completely scraped his scouting report, Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer had a simple answer. “They still have LeBron James.” Indeed.
5. James finished with a triple-double of 22 points, 17 assists and 12 rebounds. The Cavs had six double-figure scorers including Korver (30) and Jeff Green (24) off the bench.
6. The Cavaliers played just seven players, going only two deep on the bench with Green and Korver as reserves, until early in the fourth quarter when they had a 19-point lead. The final two available players checked in with 1:10 remaining. James and Smith played 20 of the 24 first-half minutes. James played all but 3:29 of the first half. He finished playing 41 minutes.
7. In the meeting between the teams in Atlanta in November, Calderon was in the starting lineup for the Cavaliers and had trouble staying with Dennis Schroder, who finished with 27 points on 11 of 19 shooting. Schroder had 12 first-quarter points and finished with a team-high 25 points on 10 of 18 shooting on Friday. However, he failed to drive on several occasions and settled for 3-pointers, going 2 of 8 from long range.
“I don’t think he settled for 3-pointers,” Budenholzer said. “He shot eight? That’s a lot but they were starting to take away the paint and wall it off a little better.”
8. Rookie Tyler Dorsey was the Hawks first sub, something that has become a trend and will likely continue now that the contract of Marco Belinelli was finalized and the veteran shooting guard was finalized Friday He finished with 14 points, including three 3-pointers.
9. Isaiah Taylor, who figures to be another beneficiary of the Belinelli buyout, gave the Hawks a nice spark in the second quarter. He hit back-to-back 3-pointers and the 6-0 run turned a four-point deficit into a two-point lead, 45-43.
10. There were plenty of cheers for James with a Cavs-friendly crowd. However, the biggest cheer of the night came when Chipper Jones, recently elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was shown on the scoreboard and introduced to the crowd.
