Statement!

Finally the Hawks make a statement! It has taken what seems years for the Hawks to genuinely announce themselves as a NBA title contender but last night, in the shade of the palm trees, the Atlanta Hawks dispatched a Miami Heat team consisting of two thirds of the big three, the best two thirds by the way. It didn’t come the way that you’d expect either. The Hawks have always been a very fine offensive team, with players like Joe Johnson and Josh Smith it’s pretty easy to be, but last night the Hawks won on the back of their defence. Had it not been for a desperation buzzer beater they would have held the Heat to a single digit point total in the first period. They accumulated 33 defensive rebounds, have 8 steals and 2 blocks and, perhaps most importantly, forced the Heat into 16 turnovers. To do this to a team that had LeBron James scoring 34 points and Dwayne Wade scoring 27 should not be ignored because they did it without the interior defence of Al Horford who sprained his ankle early in the third quarter, he ended up playing only 21 minutes.

This game also showed us exactly what Larry Drew’s sharing offence could really achieve. The offence doesn’t entail any of the team’s stars to actually be stars, although it does help when Joe Johnson scores 30+ points or Josh Smith grabs a double double. At AmericanAirlines Arena last night no Hawks player scored 20 points but the team, as a whole, had 20 assists. The best points total for the Hawks was 19 which was shared by JJ and Jamal Crawford, who played 32 minutes off the bench, Josh Smith did have a double double, scoring 15 and grabbing 12 boards.

In games decided by 5 points or less the Hawks are now 8-4 on the season and in their last 10 games they are 8-2 and now only 2 games out of the lead in the South East Division and 4 and a half back on the Boston Celtics in the Eastern conference standings. They have the fourth best conference record at 18-8 and win both in the Phillips Arena where they are 14-6 while being 14-9 on the road. If you cast your mind back just several weeks when everyone was giving up on the Hawks as unchanged from the days of Mike Woodson, well they are changed, they are better and with displays like last night possibly, very possibly a genuine title contender.