The Hawks’ defensive woes returned over their past two games against the Raptors.
They could not stop the onslaught of scoring from several Raptors players, who attacked the rim or burned them in the midrange. The Raptors just kept the ball moving, and the Hawks were too slow in their rotations. So, the Raptors cracked the paint.
Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly from the Hawks’ 118-100 loss to the Raptors on Monday.
The good
The Hawks needed every bit of scoring they could get, given the way the Raptors forced them into inefficient shots. So, the flurry of shotmaking from Zaccharie Risacher was a welcome sight.
Despite picking up his fifth foul 19 seconds into the third quarter, he scored a cutting layup 21 seconds later, before making another with 10:08 left in the frame.
He then made a running layup, drained a 3-point shot before making back-to-back layups with 7:31 to play in the game. He knocked down a 3 that brought the Hawks within seven, but fouled Scottie Barnes just over a minute later, bringing his night to an end.
Risacher finished with 16 points, four rebounds, four assists and one steal.
“You can be aggressive in a lot of ways,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “He threw himself into the game on the defensive end and got rewarded for it.”
He has averaged 10.4 points per game over the past 10 games, as he continues to find ways to impact the game.
The bad
The Hawks had seven players end the night in double-digit scoring. But the shots generated were inefficient because the Hawks did not move the ball as effectively as they could.
The team has led the NBA in assists because they play with pace and had been solid at moving the ball around the perimeter to find the right shot. But on Monday, the ball stuck to one side of the court, with players trying to go into isolation with a lengthy Raptors defender.
The Hawks also tended to overdribble as opposed to passing the ball decisively, leading to not enough movement off the ball.
“We need to keep moving the ball,” Snyder said. “A lot of times, I felt like there were open people, and we’ve got to find them. There’s certain things that we have to do in order to have success, and we weren’t doing those things at the beginning.”
The ugly
Lack of transition defense hurt the Hawks.
The Raptors just too often seemed to get whatever they wanted, especially off the Hawks’ misses. Roughly 36% of the Raptors’ scoring came off the Hawks’ missed field-goal attempts. They averaged close to 131 points per 100 transition plays that began off a live rebound.
The Hawks were too slow to get back, even after the Raptors — who scored 29 fast-break points — took the ball out of the net. So even if the Hawks made a bucket, they could not generate a stop to create a run to get out of the hole.
The Raptors added 9.3 points per 100 transition plays, which ranked them in the 93rd percentile for games played Monday, according to Cleaning the Glass.
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