Atlanta Hawks, Jalen Johnson bounce back with impressive home win over Cleveland Cavaliers

Atlanta Hawks, Jalen Johnson bounce back with impressive home win over Cleveland Cavaliers

On today’s show, the Hawks bounce back in a big way after a brutal loss on Tuesday and get a massive win over the Cavs on this Friday evening. We’ll get into all of what transpired, how the Hawks pulled it out late, and much more. And it’s all coming up right now. You are Locked On Hawks, your daily Atlanta Hawks podcast, part of the Locked Onet. Your team every day. Hello friends, welcome to episode 2112 of the Loton Hawks podcast, part of the Loton Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. I am your host Brad Roland coming to you on a Friday evening here at the end of November and today’s podcast FanDuel sportsbook. Right now, if you’re a new customer at FanDuel, you bet only $5. Your first bet wins, you get $300 in bonus bets across the FanDuel app. Head to fanduel.com right now to get started. And I’ll be diving in today to what became a very nice win for the Hawks 130 to 123 at the hands of the Cavs on this Friday in an NBA Cup game. It was not uh meaningful for the Hawks in that standpoint, but it was for the Cavs and the Hawks played spoiler in this one. Please forgive me if you are watching on YouTube. I am playing a road game. The Hawks were at home, but it’s because of Thanksgiving. I am on the road myself. So hopefully this is a uh a dial in podcast on a Friday night, but plenty to get to and really it’s all positive and it’s also a good reminder of life in the NBA if you missed it. The most recent episode of this podcast was breaking down what became a brutal ugly loss for the Hawks on Tuesday in Washington DC where they were favored in that game by more points than they had been all season long and they and they totally laid an egg against the Wizards. Then 72 hours later in their next game after the holiday they get an excellent victory in which they were the second biggest underdog they have been all year tonight against the Cavs because of the situation the opponent and all of that. No Porzingis no Troy Young for the Hawks to catch all of their top five guys healthy in this game and after the injury reports came out and were finalized on Friday evening. The Hawks were seven-point underdogs at home in this game according our friends at FanDuel. And only the game against the Thunder early in the season was a bigger lift through the projections for the Hawks. But in this one, they led early. They led often and it was never comfortable. This was a close game late after a back andforth first half to say the least. Also down by one point within the final four minutes of this game and it was actually tied with 90 seconds to go before a couple of huge shots for me. The biggest shot of the game was a Zachary Reese three with about 120 to go to give the Hawks the lead that they would never give back. And uh a fun one to be sure. So a lot to get into on this game, but certainly the big picture is a heck of a bounceback. It is a reminder again of what I said before about the life in the NBA aspect about never getting too high or too low because yeah, Tuesday was brutal for the Hawks. And I expressed that as much as I could on this podcast, but then to come back and kind of I would say pretty much erase it. Like if you were to simulate the game on Tuesday and the game on Friday by the point spread or whatever, it’s basically the Hawks are going to go one and one most of the time. They got they took a weird way to one and one, but they did it uh in a pretty impressive fashion in this one. So I want to leave with the offense in this game. putting up 130 against the Cavs is pretty impressive. The Cavs are not not an elite defense, but certainly a competent NBA defense with all of their guys available up front and the Hawks were able to jam the ball down their throats and on the fast break through a large portion of this game. For some context, about three or four weeks ago, the Hawks went in Cleveland and lost and had their second worst offensive game of the season in that game. They scored about 102 points per 100 possessions in that game. They had 23 turnovers. It was pretty rough. that was there on the road. It was it was an ugly game. Tonight, they put up about a 120 offensive rating and ran on 27% of possessions. That’s a 99th percentile number in terms of how often they were running in this game. And that is twofold. Number one, it’s a commitment to do so, to try to play fast, and the Hawks were very good at doing that. It also means you have to get some stops and also ideally some turnovers to help fuel that. And the Hawks did all of that stuff in this game. But the headline number of the night by far was the Hawks had 36 fast break points in this game. That is their season high. It’s the second most they’ve had in a game in the last two decades and the most they’ve had since 2012. That’s a ton of pass rate points. And again, this is not you’re not playing the Kings. Like for example, the Hawks season high before today was 33 against the Kings. The Kings are with due respect pretty bad, particularly on defense. The Cavs are not that. to do this against a real team on, you know, a real opponent that had stakes. They were playing their guys. That’s impressive stuff for the Hawks to execute, but also just the relentless pursuit of running and running and running some more. And look, it covers up. The Hawks are pretty limited in the half court right now. That’s the reality. It has been for a while without Troy Young and all of that, even without in this game as well. But the Hawks, I think, knew that and have known that and they want to play a certain way and they they definitely executed that to the highest level in this one. It definitely helped that Jaylen Johnson was tremendous individually in this game with 29 12 and 12. Jaylen has been dynamic on offense. He was brutal on Tuesday. He was kind of the oneman encapsulation of the difference between Tuesday and tonight. He was awful on Tuesday, probably the worst game of the season. And tonight he was absolutely dominant for large portions of this game. But the Hawks, as I said before, just turning the ball over um winning that battle back and forth is huge. They had three turnovers in the first three minutes when they were kind of getting down early on in this one. And from that point forward, they only had 11 the rest of the game. 14 for the whole game is totally fine against this defense. And they won that battle. And they also only had a couple of uh I would say only a couple really bad ones. And that kind of helped to limit the damage defensively as well. And beyond the fast break points, and a lot of these were fast break points, they were 32 of 46 on twos. That’s 67% or so. That’s an excellent number. They shot fairly well from three. Like not crazy, 37% but on good volume. They created a bunch of shots. Kill Alexander Walker got up 13 threes by himself in this game, which is obviously a huge huge positive. They did miss some free throws along the way that were kind of frustrating and didn’t have a lot on the glass, but everything else offensively was really strong. The ball security helped and the uh the transition stuff certainly fortified everything for Atlanta. I mentioned Dylan before, um Alexander Walker had 28 points in this game as well. He has been absolutely huge for the Hawks this year in particular without Trey, but even before that just been awesome. They had seven guys in double figures, good balance along the way. Um, no one offensively was like limited other than maybe Luke Canard and a little bit of Katon Wallace. Everybody else did kind of their normal parts offensively I would say to different degrees. Um, as we get into later on, Dyson Daniels not a huge scoring game and had nine assists as a secondary creator in this game. Breechie took 12 shots, wasn’t super efficient, had 14 points. Moay had 12 points. Like it was basically across the board and then Jaylen and Aquille kind of led the way at the top of the heap offensively. On defense, they weren’t special in this game, but they were more than good enough. Um, I think the story was mostly inside the ark. The Cavs are the number one team in the league in taking threes, and they got up 39 in this game, which a little bit less than they average, which is crazy, but they they made their usual 17 threes, but the Hawks were um Hawks held them to sub 50% on two-point shots. That’s a huge factor. Only 46 points in the paint for Cleveland in this game. If it wasn’t a Donovan Mitchell three, there wasn’t too much going on for the Cavs all the way through in crunch time, etc. Um, Hawks also won the turnover battle. Again, I mentioned this before, but juicing the way you’re able to run on offense is be able to get stops on defense and also get steals and turnovers on defense. In this game, they forced 17 turnovers and 11 of those were of the live ball steel variety. They led to 25 points on turnovers, which is a huge number in this game. And in a close back and forth game, those little margins were basically told the story, I think, in this one. Like obviously the big headliners of Jaylen’s triple double, the Hawks having the fast break points and all of that, but winning the little margins is often very important. The Hawks were able to basically be dead even in the possession game overall despite a lack of rebounding. They do have some defensive rebounding issues that still plague them in this game. Gave up 14 offensive rebounds to the Cavs team that’s not going to be killing you in that area too often, but they were able to overcome that because they were able to get to the line and run and run and run and run some more. So again, that’s that’s basically they held Mitchell to 40. I’m sorry, I didn’t hold Mitchell. Mitchell to 42 points. That’s a lot. But everybody else, Moy was fine. Hunter did a little bit in his return to Atlanta, but it wasn’t anybody else that was dynamic for the Cavs in this game and they were able to kind of hold serve as a result of that. And it wasn’t perfect. Like the good thing is about this game is that sometimes everything goes your way and you win a game. That kind of happened to the Wizards on Tuesday when they were the underdogs. The Hawks were terrible. All those things. This one wasn’t that. Like the Hawks are not better than the Cavs right now, particularly without Trey Borzing. They’re not better than the Cavs on the whole, I wouldn’t think. But tonight, they were they were the better team. They just played better than the Cavs did. And that’s a good sign overall. The Hawks can again erasing that bad taste from Tuesday, getting back to 12 and eight on the season. You know, 60% winning percentage is what you want to have. That’s like a 50-ish win pace right now. The Hawks are on. And when when you factor in that Trey missed 14 and a half games, that’s a heck of a place to be. They have a tough backto-back on Sunday and Monday. we’ll talk about later on. But a good good win on this Friday. It would have been nice for if for it to matter for the NBA Cup. Yes, they gave that away on Tuesday. That’s the one um downside of this. If you care about that event, they gave that away in a big time fashion on Tuesday. But they played sport of the Cavs kept they kept they kept the Cavs out of the NBA Cup quarterfinals. And big picture, just a heck of a win at home on this Friday evening. All right, more to come in a second when it comes to how this game unfolded, my analysis throughout the game, how things, you know, kind of flipped back and forth. A lot of big runs in this one. Who excelled, who didn’t, and much more. And we’ll get into all that and more in just one moment. The NBA is rocking and rolling right now. The best place to get in the mix is FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. If you miss the start of the game perhaps, or you just want to ride a hot hand during the game, they have live bets at FanDuel, everything you can possibly imagine, including which team is going to score next, comebacks in the fourth quarter, and much more. Plus, you can buy live bets together if you want to into a singular marlay for a shot at a bigger payout. On top of that, they have all kinds of bet types you can think of from point spreads to overunders, money lines, player props, game props, future bets, and so much more. 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Georgia Access is our state’s marketplace for Georgia to compare, apply, and enroll in health insurance plans that offer the best value for their individual needs. Open enrollment is happening now. Visit georgia.gov today. That’s georgiaac.gov. Georgia access health insurance for Georgia by Georgia. All right. I want to encourage you right now to make LO on Hawks your first listen each and every day. Check out the show. Subscribe anywhere you get your podcast, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc. And please do me a favor and tell your friends about the show as well. I very much appreciate it. And we’ll dive in now to how this game kind of unfolded. And long time ago, I felt like this. By the way, this is a very, very long basketball game because of all these delays and shot clock malfunctions and reviews and all kinds. It was a marathon of a game on a Friday night, but the Hawks were down 7 nothing. And to begin the game, they had three turnovers and they were 0 for four from the floor in the first three minutes of the game. That was not the way they wanted to start this one. I I can promise you that. Also, they had fouls on both Dyson Nanos and Nelly’s Xer Walker in the first minute. That’s a tough matchup to have that kind of foul trouble with um those guys playing against Darius Scarland and Donov Mitchell. Fortunately, it sort of evened out after that and the only guy in foul trouble for the Hawks in this game on the whole was a Kongwoo who almost fouled out at the end of the game. But regardless, once the Hawks woke up though, it was pretty good. They had a 21 to4 run in the first quarter. They went from going scoreless on their first seven possessions to scoring on five straight. And all told, they made eight of their next nine shots and had one turnover. So, as I said before, when they stopped turning the ball over, things went pretty well offensively in this one. Um, at the mid-carter break, there was actually a tribute video for DeAndre Hunter, old friend who played in State Farm Arena as a visiting player for the first time. Um, he he never came back to the Hawks um, last year of the Cath played in Atlanta. And of course, if you need a reminder, Hunter played his first five and a half seasons with the Hawks. So, uh, nice warm reception for him. He had a little bit of a dust up later on with Mo Gay, but Hunter came back for the first time. We wanted to note that, but the Cavs couldn’t make a shot early in this game. They were five of 19 from the floor and one of six from three. And that helped the Hawks to score 14 of their first 27 points on fast breaks. That was a big part of the Hawks having their season high and like decade high in fast break points. They were doing that early and often in this one. Um, rotationally, I like to give you a look at what the Hawks did if you are new to the podcast. And, uh, it was a little bit different because of the Porzingis scratch. So, Porzigus was not on the injury report originally, but he was added as questionable on Friday afternoon and then ruled out with illness. All kinds of questions came in as I’m not surprised and I understand for sure about what kind of illness it is. I can’t answer that. I don’t know the answer to that. He does have POTS, the syndrome that we talked about a lot this summer, which Fred Cass wrote about for the Athletic. If you want to find more about that, they’re managing that all the time. It could be related to that. I don’t know for sure that it is. Could be different, but um anytime there’s illness involved with Porzingis, kind of the antenna goes up a little bit. I’m not sure if it’s going to impact him moving forward. I saw some frustrating messages from people like, “Guys, he wants to play. I promise you he wants to play. It’s uh he obviously just wasn’t well enough to play in this game.” It is his eighth miss game in the first 20. Three of those, I will say, were planned rests on backto-back. So, he’s only missed five games for illness or injury. I would project he misses at least one of the next two as well as they play back toback Sunday and Monday. But um I don’t know anything else beyond that. He didn’t play today. Illness was the listing and that’s kind of a catch-all. It could be again related to pots. Could be related to something else. We just don’t know. But he was out for this game as was Trey Young of course. So it led to Mo Gabby being the first sub in the third big off the floor. Extra the Hawks only played three bigs in this game. It was only a Kongu Jaylen and Mo. Nobody else got in. No Asa Newell in this one. By the way, Asa played in the Gil yesterday which I uh not actually not yesterday, Wednesday, which uh was good to see just for some minutes for him. Um Card and Cree both came in as you would expect. They did actually I thought they were going to go with an eight rotation in this game because they went deep into this in the second quarter without playing Katon Wallace for more than 25 seconds but then he played a couple times. Um kind of a strange deployment for Katon in this game I thought. Um but anyway it was nine guys that played and it was the guy it was the nine you would have guessed in this one. Box are up by 10. So after the 70 start they rebounded perfectly and had a 10-point lead. They made 13 of their next 20 shots. They had 16 fast break points which the most of the quarter most of any quarter of the season for the Hawks as on their way to 36 for the game. Um I mentioned the dust up earlier on. Um Hunter dunked over Moay and then stared down and kind of jawed at Mo as they changed ends and Mo kind of shoved him to the floor and they were viewed at they reviewed the play. They were called for a double foul and Mo got a technical foul. Kind of a soft technical like I got it though. Once he fell down to the ground it was like all right he’s going to get probably in there and uh no really harm done necessarily. But the entire first half was basically a tale of runs. The Cavs went on a 140 run as the Hawks were up by 13. They went away entirely like right away. The Hawks missed their first seven shots of the quarter. Um after that, V kind of made a couple big shots I thought to kind of stabilize things. The Cavs scored 20 points in about four minutes early in the second quarter. It was a 27-7 overall run by Cleveland. Uh the Hawks did kind of get back into it after that with some good aggression from Jaylen um and also Nquille. It was tight back and forth from that point forward. The Hawks didn’t make a ton of threes in this game. They didn’t make six in the second quarter alone, which was massive, I thought, in this one. Um, the only real, you know, it was kind of an odd box score game, especially in the first half. Basically, it was dead even almost everywhere except for the two-point shooting for the Hawks was good and the three-point shooting for the Cavs was good. Everybody, everything else was basically right down the middle, but uh I thought Alexander Walker was huge. 15 points in the first half. He was uh a big- time factor there. There was a clock malfunction during halftime that delayed the start of the third quarter and they went without some some of the shot clocks in the second half. Again, a marathon night at the office. The game went well past 1000 p.m. which is crazy um without overtime. Alas, um the Hawks had another big run early in the third quarter, 16 to four. Hey, Nquille had six straight points that were huge and then Rish got involved as well. The Hawks were again running and running and running some more. I like that they ran an inbounds play for Risha to get a three after he passed on a few shots earlier on. As I’ll talk about later, I thought Zach should have played more in this game, but I thought he played well and probably should have, you know, been featured more often. I wish they ran some ran some stuff for him in the second half of this one. They did use the Wallace Canard Cache lineup that I do not understand twice in the second half. Now, it was only for about a total of two minutes, but they lost both stints. And I don’t really understand the deployment on either of them. Just something I’m just never I’m never going to get that Quinn’s been doing. Um, it definitely hurt them a little bit in this one. And Atlanta did go um into the fourth quarter up by seven after a 37point third quarter. Offensively it was their probably their best period overall. They were 11 of 13 on twos and they got to the line nine times. That was uh impressive and comprehensive. In the fourth they struggled defensively I thought at the early part of the fourth quarter. The catch 13 points in like two minutes. They did a couple they got a couple big shots from V cr and Luke Canar to kind of save them off a little bit but then Vit had a memorably bad fast break. Um my my old friend Josh Lane uh who coined the Marvin scale was trying to put that one on there. Beat just blew a fast break badly. It led to a point led to a bucket for the Cavs as well. That was a big notable swing. And again, if they had lost it, I’m going to circle that even more. But they won. So there you go. Um out of a timeout though, they had a nice stretch by Des Daniels who had a bucket and then a nice outlet pass to Very for a dunk. Quinn had a good challenge. I thought actually on on Yeka’s fifth foul with eight minutes to go. He didn’t win it, but I didn’t I didn’t hate the challenge. It was a reasonable one. I the call was I thought wrong but I wasn’t shocked that it wasn’t overturned because it’s like whatever the call on the floor is gets a little bit of precedent on that front. Again inexplicably they went to that Wallace Canari lineup. It didn’t last very long but uh it was part of a 100 run by Cleveland to go from the Hawks winning to now suddenly trailing mid fourth quarter. The Hawks had an eight-point lead that went away in like two minutes. Basically a had a big shot in the middle of the quarter to kind of tie the game. They were down by three with four minutes to go and they came back with a starter with the starters in full which is the right decision. I thought recently I thought sat way too long. They scored the next eight points to go up by five with 240 to go. But then the Cavs then countered right back in a game that was certainly known for its onbrand like back and forth and back and forth and back and forth runs everywhere. It never stopped in this game. The Cavs scored four straight times to tie the game. Um then a big swing happened. um unfortunately didn’t hurt the Hawks in the end, but Nquille seemingly drew a three-shot foul with 123 to go. The Cavs then challenged it and won the challenge and it became a jump ball. Mind you, this is a tie game at this point with a minute and a half to go and it was seemingly going to be three free throws for Nquille. The Cavs won the challenge. It was that handtohand, you know, you know, high five contact rule. It might have been adjudicated right, but just one of those frustrating plays. It’s like looks like a foul to me. They called it a foul on the floor. Overturned it. Frustrating for sure. Um fortunately a Kongu wins the jump ball after a dead ball jump ball which by the way a huge one with 123 to go. Like you don’t want to have a high leverage jump ball if you can help it. But they got one. They win it. And then Risha hits a massive shot. The biggest shot of the game. It’s tied with 120 to go and he hits a three to give the Hawks a three-point lead. That was a massive shot for a young guy who has not played a ton of closing minutes this season. Hasn’t played enough of them in my opinion. That was a big shot. Then Mitchell missed one. So right after Risha hits one, Mitchell misses one, their star player. And then Aquil hits one to go up by six points with 100 minutes ago. So the game was basically right there. Tie game win a jump ball three Cleveland. And suddenly the Hawks are like a 90% plus favorite within 30 seconds if that. Um that didn’t end the game like it wasn’t over, but certainly that was the death blow for the Cavs. The game was never close again. Um it was a seven-point game again after that because Jayl missed a free throw. But uh the Cavs I don’t believe score. Yeah, Cavs didn’t score in the last 136 of the game. I think they went 0 for four possession wise, maybe 0 for five at the end of the game. So that was the swing. But again, I will say it was very very on brand. This game came down to a couple of runs here and there at the end of the game. Um and the Hawks had the right side of it at the end of this one. Again, huge up to Zachary at a big time and that was a pro, I’m sure, good for his confidence as he’s had kind of a slow start coming back from the injury. All right, more to come in a second when it comes to how the playerby player evaluations went in this game, plus a look ahead at what’s to come and a Trey Young potential re-evaluation in the coming days. We’re going to all that and more in just one moment. The NBA season is heating up and has a perfect way to keep your fans in the bag all season long. Whether watching for highlights, watching your fantasy teams, or just keeping an eye on your favorite players, Door Dash makes every single game night even better for you. And Door Dash is the official on demand delivery platform of the NBA. 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Visit door-ashinyourbag.com for full details. Door Dash in your bag all season long. All right, and real quickly before I talk about the player evaluations from the Cavs game tonight, it’s now been four weeks since the Hawks announced the four-week re-evaluation timetable for Trey Young. And Trey was on the court before the game tonight taking some shots, not running, just taking some shots. And that prompted another rash of question questions, which I totally understand. Um, the exact four-week mark for Trey’s reevaluation from the Hawks announcement four weeks ago is Saturday. That does not mean the Hawks will definitely announce an update on Saturday. I asked about this today and I was told something will be coming soon, but not specifically on Saturday. So, keep an eye on that. Um, also, it’s an evaluation, not a return. We’ll see. They’re not bound to like by legal stuff to announce something tomorrow. I think something will be coming up at some point relatively soon on an update front. So, we’ll see if it’s more of a like punt to the future or if trad get closer and closer. I don’t think it’ll be out for too much longer, but we don’t really know. So, that’s the question. If if I had a better answer, I’d definitely report it. I don’t have one right now, but uh Trey could be back sometime in the near future, but we do not know at this point as I’m recording this on Friday night. All right, back to the game itself. Nine guys appeared for the Hawks in this one. Everyone that was active played other than Ace New and Jacob Toppenhen in this game. Keem Wallace played the least, played nine minutes, did not score, two assists, 01 from the floor, minus seven. You know, Katon being minus seven in a seven-point win in nine minutes is not like his fault. I don’t think he was like individually bad. I thought and I was I would say optimistic that they would not play him in this game. I think it would have been a good night to play an eightman rotation and they were kind of going towards that. Um, when you have Canard V Dyson and Nquille, you probably didn’t need to play Katon in this game. And also, the way he was deployed was kind of odd. Like, it was a weird time. Like, he was in the game with like six minutes to go. I don’t really get that, but Keen individually was not a problem. It just was a little bit of a strange situation, but I also understand not want to play eight guys when not press minutes too much at this point. Um, Luke Canard had kind of a rough one. Three points, minus seven, two assists. Um, defensively, I think he struggled in this one even more so than normal. did make one big three in the third quarter, but um was not his best night off the offense and I think he um justifiably played the second least of anybody only ahead of Katon. Um Verachche 21 minutes, 14 points, three assists. In contrast to when I was frustrated the other day by V playing so much in a game where he just didn’t shoot, didn’t really have an impact. He took 12 shots in 21 minutes, including nine threes. Like I’m fine if V gets shots up. It makes total sense to me for him to play this kind of amount. Um, defensively he does struggle sometimes, but he did he did have two steals in this game. Was two or three on twos, three for three, like played fine. I don’t think he was a problem. I think Zach should have played a little bit more than he did, but that’s not directly on V, who I thought was okay. Um, Mo Gay had kind of an interesting game. He had 10 points in the first quarter and then two points the rest of the game. Ended up with 12 on seven shots, three rebounds, two assists, a steal. I thought Mo was not his absolute best defensively in this one. Like, usually he’s a gamewrecker. He was totally fine there to be to be clear. But it wasn’t like he was just dominating. But and the Hawks were also minus 15 with him on the floor. That wasn’t on Mo. I don’t think some of the two big lineups didn’t work very well in this one by the numbers, but I don’t really hate that at all. Um I thought Mo was fine. I don’t think he did had a great game, but he certainly was active early in the game, which definitely helped the Hawks to get going after the slow start. Uh to the starters, Zachary 27 points, sorry, 27 minutes, 14 points on six shots from the field. He was three or three on twos, two or three from three. Got the line twice, made both, three rebounds and an assist. I Zach should have played more. I think Zack it’s underrated. And I will actually shout out my good friend David Lee for pointing this out quite a bit even in the last couple days. Zach’s value as a transition player is massive. It’s not always him finishing. It’s the fact that he is always busting it down the floor and he finds the right lane. And on a night when the Hawks have 36 back break points that a lot of not a lot part of that is Zach and I think he’s a real factor whether he’s the one scoring them or not. He is a a weapon there. He was plus 16 in this game. I thought he played um really well. I was glad he closed the game. If he didn’t I would have been frustrated beyond belief because he earned it in this game. Played well. Not a huge like 30-point game or anything like that but I thought Zach it was a nice step forward for him. Um and now back toback games where he actually scored effectively for the Hawks. Uh the other four guys, um the key kind of core four right now that are available were all good to varying degrees. So I’ll go with Dyson next. Dyson had 10 points, nine assists, eight rebounds, three steals, plus 10. Now, there were still some moments where he was passing up shots and kind of muddying up the offense a little bit. I’m going to keep saying that until it stops happening. Um Dice has never never been a great shooter by any means, but he’s still he needs to be he still needs to take more shots. That’s been a theme the last couple weeks. It’s still a theme now. He’s got to shoot. He’s got to shoot. He’s got to shoot. But he did play well otherwise. He managed to kind of play off things. Again, the nine assists, played up well, play good defense. I thought Dyson had a fine game if he needs to shoot more. Let’s just say that. Um, Akong Wu, 18 points, seven rebounds, four assists, two blocks, two steals. He continues to be really, really good. Like Akong Wu is playing at a top like 15 center in the league kind of level. He’s been playing really well all year long. It’s really a luxury to have a guy like a Kong Wu to be your starting center with when Pz’s games like that. That’s been a theme since the summer like the Hawks have two starting centers and they do. Akongu is a full-blown all capital letters starting good center and he showed it again in this game. I thought he was better than Moy. I thought he was better than Allen. So that’s uh nice to see. Certainly better than Allen. I don’t know about Moy, but I mean close enough. Um he definitely outdooled Allen in a big way in this game. So shout outs to Anong who’s been playing great. Um Nquille has been awesome again. Um, the Hawks actually during this podcast there is looks like there’s been a correction potentially on his numbers in this one. The NBA box score I’m looking at right now has him for 30 points. It was 28 a minute ago. So maybe it’s maybe it’ll change back or even whether it’s 20 or 30, he had a great game. He was fantastic. I wrote last week on Fansided that I think Nquille has been the best free agent signing in the entire league last summer and I stand by that. I think he’s been tremendous. I don’t think he’s getting enough national attention because of the way he’s played so far. The scoring has just been like remarkable. Like I was not expecting him to average 20 points a game. That’s basically where he is at this point. Like he didn’t even shoot it great in this game. He was five of nine on twos, five of 13 from three. Like that’s totally fine. But 30 points on 23 shooting possessions, 24 shooting possessions. Like just did the job. His usage has gone up. Defensively has been good. Um yeah, just played great again in this one. And then Joe Johnson 29 12 and 12 to go along with two steals plus 20 in the game. Six of 11 on two, three of seven from three. Like I think Jaylen’s defense still is not where I want it to be. I think Jaylen’s defensively like he’s had too many mistakes defensively. Even in this game like for large portions he was like man why is he not better defensively? But it’s hard to complain about that when he has 29 12 and 12. He now has seven assists or more in 10 straight games. That’s crazy. Like point guard level numbers. The passing has been real. The attacking has been really really impressive. Like he is on his way to the All-Star game. I said that before. I’ll say it again now. Monster game here for Jaylen. He was in control late. Had forced us in the fourth quarter. Like just was really good. Um making things happen, making the right play and play a lot of minutes, but certainly earned it in this game as well. So from here, the Hawks, this is a great win. Again, I don’t want to overstate it. It’s it’s only just in the way similarly to the way bring this full circle the way I I was trying to say on Tuesday that it was just one loss. It was a bad one which I I want to be very clear about. It was a very very bad loss but it’s one game. This is a very very good win. It’s also one game and not too high too low is probably the way I would approach this. But it was even more important because they have a very tough backto-back this coming weekend. So, Sunday they go to Philadelphia and the Sixers are not a great team. They’re fine. They have some talent. Tyrese Maxi has been going absolutely nuts this season. Um, averaging 30 plus points a game. Um, that’s ridiculous, but they’re okay. They’re they’re they’re pretty good. They’re not a bad team at all. And that’s a road game on Sunday. So, that’s nothing easy. And then from there, they have a road game on Monday against Detroit. And Detroit has been the best team in the East so far. Um, I think they’re the best team in the East overall. I don’t. and they’ve lost two games in a row now after their scalding hot stretch, but you still that’s not an easy game at all. So, two games on the road that are not going to be easy games. So, getting this win, especially after Tuesday night game was just massive. So, a tough one to come up, but they Hawks can handle it and then they come home for two after that and we’ll see what happens. So, one more time, Miami Cup is already over for the Hawks. That’s that’s not a concern. The Hawks will get two more games assigned to them in a couple of weeks. But on a night when uh things could have gone wrong, there were a lot of times when things where the rope was going a little bit the wrong way, the Hawks kept bouncing back and bouncing back and bouncing back and getting a very very big win on a Friday night. Hopefully people were able to check this one out in the midst of all kinds of football. I know Georgia Tech was today. A lot going on, but hopefully you dialed in. If you didn’t, you listen listen to this podcast. We are always here uh to cover everything for the Hawks, even if you miss things in the meantime. So, please subscribe to Leon Hawks anywhere you find your podcast, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Follow the show on Twitterx at Leon Hawks. Follow me there at BT Roland. Follow me on Blue Sky BT Roland. Then follow my nonpodcast coverage of the Hawks at patreon.com/bt Roland. All right, everybody, enjoy the rest of your Friday evening into Saturday. I’ll be back after the game on Sunday evening, and we’ll see you all next time.

Brad Rowland (@BTRowland) hosts Episode 2112 of the Locked on Hawks podcast, breaking down Friday’s game between the Atlanta Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Topics include the bounce-back nature of a win after an ugly loss, Jalen Johnson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker leading the way, Atlanta’s powerful work in transition, a huge late shot for Zaccharie Risacher, and much more.

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