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Friday, January 13 - Celtics at Hawks
Pregame – C’s Set to Face NBA’s Hottest Defense in ATL
ATLANTA – The Atlanta Hawks a little more than a month ago were in the midst of their worst losing spell in recent memory. They lost 10 out of 11 games from Nov. 18 to Dec. 5 and began to plummet in the Eastern Conference standings after an impressive 9-2 start.
Brad Stevens, whose Boston Celtics will take on the Hawks tonight in Atlanta, didn’t expect that difficult stretch to last, especially after seeing what they were capable of last season when they knocked his C’s out of the Playoffs.
Sure enough, Stevens was right.
Atlanta has completely flipped the switch since their early-season tumble and has been the hottest team in the league over the last two weeks. The Hawks have won an NBA-best, seven consecutive games and possess a league-leading 96.1 defensive rating during that span.
“I think that sometimes we overreact to tough stretches,” Stevens said ahead of tonight’s 8 p.m. tip-off at Philips Arena. “They were missing some guys during their tough stretch and obviously they had a tough schedule, but they started the season [9-2] and then they’ve been on this surge.
“I mean they’re a really good basketball team that’s obviously really well-coached. And defensively it looks a lot like what we played against last year (during the Playoffs) with the ability to fly around.”
Atlanta’s push defense is the most concerning element heading into tonight’s game. The Hawks are extremely aggressive on that end of the floor and point guard Dennis Schroder’s constant tenacity could potentially create problems – even for a high-volume scorer like Isaiah Thomas.
Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said this morning that getting the ball out of Thomas’ hands will be priority No. 1 for his defense.
“We’ll probably throw a couple of different looks at him,” said Budenholzer following Hawks shootaround. “Sometimes he’s hard to contain and keep corralled. Most great players, you have to throw them a few different looks, so we better be prepared to make it difficult on him.”
The Hawks have certainly made it difficult on Thomas in the past. While IT averaged an impressive 24.2 points per game against Atlanta during last year’s six-game Playoff series, the Hawks managed to hold him to 39.5 percent shooting from the field and a 28.3 percent clip from 3-point range.
“This is a really good team, a tremendous defensive team and a team that has exposed us in a lot of ways in the past,” admitted Stevens.
At the moment, the defensively driven Hawks are the hottest team in the league, so Boston’s offense must be clicking on all cylinders tonight if it hopes to come out of Atlanta with a win.
- Taylor C. Snow