Hawks Bottle Up Miami Heat with Balanced, Two-Way Approach in 98-86 Win

The Atlanta Hawks came into their matchup with the Heat tonight badly in need of a win. They have lost their first three games since the All-Star break, but they had an excellent chance to end that streak tonight when they host the Miami Heat. Given that Atlanta and Miami are at the No. 9 seed in and the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conferece, this game could have major playoff implications.

If this was a playoff test, the Hawks passed with relative ease. Despite Trae Young only having 11 points, he finished as a +26 due to dishing out 14 assists. Onyeka Okongwu led the Hawks in scoring with 17 points to go with eight rebounds. Caris LeVert and Terence Mann both had 15 points off the bench while Georges Niang had 11 after connecting on three of his attempts from deep. Atlanta’s bench was critical to this win – they outscored the Miami second unit by a margin of 25 points. Dyson Daniels had a double-double of 10 points and 11 rebounds to pair with a whopping seven steals on defense. It was a quiet night for Zaccharie Risacher, who only scored two points after a recent hot streak on offense. Mo Gueye had nine points and three assists, as well as a nice connection on a corner three.

For Miami, Andrew Wiggins led all scorers with 23 points while Bam Adebayo had 14 points and Tyler Herro had 11. Kyle Anderson contributed 14 points off the bench and Ke’el Ware pulled down 15 boards, but it was a rough night for the Heat offense. A lot of that can be attributed to Daniels. If he keeps these types of steal numbers up, it’s going to be very hard to deny him the DPOY award.

Let’s recap tonight’s game.

Gueye got the Hawks’ offense rolling tonight, scoring the first five points of the game by throwing down a dunk and then hitting a corner three. Although he hasn’t been the most consistent scorer this year, his solid numbers at the FT line (career 80% shooter from the charity stripe) are starting to turn into good shots from the arc. Despite Miami limiting Young early to only four points in the quarter, the Hawks found some succes with a more balanced offensive approach. Mann, Okongwu, LeVert and Clint Capela all scored early. Specifically, Mann buried a nice three-pointer towards the end of the quarter that gave the Hawks a slim 23-22 lead.

Atlanta came out fighting in the second half. The Heat went with a switch-heavy defense and devoted a lot of defensive attention towards slowing down Young, but Niang had other ideas. He scored 11 points in the quarter, connecting on all three of his attempts from deep, and gave the Hawks offense a lift in his minutes. It was also a nice quarter for Capela – Young found him under the basket for an easy alley-oop while Capela himself found Niang on the perimeter for one of his threes. Although he’s played sparingly as of late, performances like these are a good reminder of how helpful he can be.

Both offenses really struggled to get going, but the Hawks won the half due to their bench. The combination of Niang, LeVert, Capela and Mann scored 26 points in the first half compared to a combined eight points from the Heat bench. Wiggins found some success against Atlanta’s defense, leading all scorers with 13 points, while Ware pulled down nine boards in the first half. However, the Heat only shot 13% from deep for the half, indicating their larger troubles with scoring in the halfcourt. Atlanta wasn’t much better at 30% from deep, but they did enough to take a 50-42 lead into half. Interestingly, they did this without big scoring performances from either Trae Young or Dyson Daniels. The Hawks’ offense has been incredibly predicated on big nights from those two, so it’s good to see them find success with a more holistic approach.

Miami started to get back into the game in the third quarter. Tyler Herro got them going with a floater to open up the second half and although Daniels answered back with a layup, Wiggins sunk a three on the very next possession to make it a five-point game. However, Okongwu gave Atlanta some breathing room by connecting on his second triple of the game. The Hawks widened the lead up to 13 after Young forced a Wiggins foul and sunk all three of his free throws. Atlanta has not been great at keeping its big leads as of late and it was encouraging to see such an standout defensive effort on the heels of giving up 148 points to the Pistons. With six minutes left, the Hawks saw their 13 point lead start to dissapear as the Heat strung some nice sequence together. First, Kyle Anderson hit a three-pointer on a nice find from Ware. Okongwu turned it over on a bad pass and Ware capitalized on the opportunity to cut it to an eight-point deficit. Duncan Robinson, who was otherwise quiet for much of the night, hit a massive three-pointer before Ware threw it down for a thunderous dunk that gave Miami new life. They made up 12 points relatively quickly and easily could have taken control of the game from then on. Fortunately, Mann stepped up as an everyman for Atlanta. He tipped a miss from LeVert back in, stripped Davion Mitchell on the next possession and got fouled by Robinson. He essentially gave the Hawks an eight-point lead by himself and the Hawks were able to keep Miami under wraps for the rest of the quarter. Outside of a pair of late free throws from Wiggins, the Heat weren’t able to generate any sort of continuous offense after that.

Fittingly, LeVert got the first points of the fourth quarter for Atlanta on a three-pointer off the pass from Mann. Later in the quarter, he threw down a big dunk after Dyson Daniels poked the ball away from Bam Adebayo off the feed from Risacher to give Atlanta a 82-73 lead with seven minutes to play in the game. However, the Heat began to rack up free throws and used those to get back into the game. The next five scoring possessions for Miami ended with free throws and it helped them slow down the game. One of the biggest calls of the game was a loose ball fall on Young with 3:25 left to go in the game. Fortunately, head coach Quin Snyder was able to overturn the call with a challenge and the Hawks took back possession. Atlanta did not disappoint – they turned to Mann and he nailed the three-pointer on the feed from Young. It wasn’t his best game as a scorer, but Young’s playmaking gives him such a solid baseline for being useful offensively.

The Mann three-pointer effectively sucked the life out of the Heat. Atlanta closed the game out with a 6-0 run and held a 98-86 lead with 33.1 seconds left to go. They’ll face off against the Heat again on Wednesday before a tough matchup with the OKC Thunder on Friday.

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