The Atlanta Hawks clinched a playoff berth with a 116-105 victory over the Miami Heat in the first game of the Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament on Tuesday night.
While the Hawks led by as many as 24 points in the first-half, this one did not feel like it was over until the final minutes as Miami trailed by 5-10 points for much of the second-half. Trae Young played well amid (bogus) rumors regarding his future with the team, finishing with 25 points and 7 assists. Dejounte Murray added 18 points and 6 assists. The Hawks’ bench was absolutely fantastic with every player reaching double-figures in scoring. Jalen Johnson was especially impressive in his 14 minutes of action, finishing with 10 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists to go along with 3 steals. The Hawks’ won the minutes when Johnson was on the floor by 8 points thanks to plays like this, this and this (whoa!).
Below, I have outlined a few areas where the Hawks excelled against the Heat.
Offensive Glass/Second Chance Points: Simply put, Atlanta dominated the offensive glass against Miami, winning the offensive rebounding battle 22-6. Clint Capela was a force – snagging 21 rebounds on the night with 8 of them coming on the offensive end – but Saddiq Bey, John Collins and Johnson were also effective in this area, combining for 10 offensive rebounds between them. Atlanta’s advantage on the offensive glass led them to a +20 advantage in second-chance points – a massive swing over the course of last night’s game as Heat Head Coach, Erik Spoelstra, pointed out in his postgame interview:
“The story is second-chance opportunities. I thought we defended fairly well, particularly from the last 5 minutes of the second quarter throughout the second-half, however we were not able to come up with those finishing rebounds… (and) if they did come up with the rebound, they were able to turn those rebounds into scores… many of those momentum breaking scores.”
While Miami was one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the league this season (4th in the league per cleaningtheglass), the Hawks have been making a concerted effort to crash the offensive boards under new Head Coach, Quin Snyder, ranking 2nd in the league in offensive rebounding percentage since Snyder took over on February 27th. One of the things Snyder appears to have emphasized is sending two to three players to crash the offensive glass hard as soon as the shot goes up, which has opened opportunities for Atlanta’s jumbo-sized wings to feast on the offensive glass under his tenure – a tweak in strategy which clearly paid off last night as you can see in the clips below.
Now compare those clips to these ones from their matchups against the Heat under former head coach, Nate McMillan, and notice the difference in effort level on the offensive glass – pretty stark isn’t it?
- Even when Okongwu comes up with the offensive rebound, note how he is the only one who is even in a position to get an offensive rebound
Something else Atlanta did last night to give them a significant advantage on the offensive glass was taking shots while Bam Adebayo was switched off of Capela and onto one of their perimeter players. One of Adebayo’s greatest strengths is his ability to guard positions 1-5 on defense, and as a result the Heat often switch him onto Atlanta’s perimeter players to stunt their effectiveness in the pick-and-roll. However, despite their tenacity, the Heat are a pretty small team behind Adebayo and the Hawks knew that they would have a size advantage on the interior whenever Bam was on the perimeter. While Clint Capela isn’t the most skilled back-to-the basket big, the Hawks still made sure to exploit their size advantage by getting up shots when he was being guarded by smaller players, giving him a chance to grab an offensive rebound and create another opportunity to score via a shot or a pass as you can see in the clips below.
Offensive rebounding has clearly been an emphasis since Snyder’s arrival (Atlanta ranked 17th in the league in offensive rebounding percentage before Quin took over), and it was wonderful to see both the players’ and coaches’ efforts in this area pay off in Miami last night. While Atlanta will certainly look to take advantage of the offensive glass/second-chance points in their first-round series against Boston, the Celtics are the #1 defensive rebounding team in the league per cleaningtheglass, so I will be interested to see if Atlanta can gain a similar edge in these areas against them.
Transition: In their two regular-season matchups against the Heat, Snyder’s Hawks began 16.5% of their offensive possessions with a transition play, scoring a respectable 1.23 points per possession on these plays. These marks were not too far off from their season averages of 15.5% (transition frequency) and 1.27 points per transition possession, however last night, their transition frequency soared to 25.8% with the team scoring a whopping 1.54 points per possession on these plays.
Transition plays begin in one of two ways. Either the opponent turns the ball over, or your team pushes after securing a defensive rebound. While Miami did not commit too many turnovers last night, the Hawks made a noticeable effort to get out in transition after grabbing a rebound – with 51.2% of their live-ball rebounds turning into transition play per cleaningtheglass. I have included a few clips below to show how quickly Atlanta was turning rebounds into points.
Capela rebound -> Young and-one
Young rebound -> Bogdanovic layup
Due to the Hawks’ scoring just 0.81 points per possession in the halfcourt (33rd percentile per cleaningtheglass), their ability to get out and run was crucial to their offensive success as they were able to avoid facing Miami’s vaunted set defense for a large portion of the game.
Additionally, the Hawks also did a good job defending Miami in transition as the Heat began 22.9% of their offensive possessions with a transition play but scored just 1.05 points per possession on these plays (1st percentile per cleaningtheglass), though it is worth noting that the Hawks benefited from some shooting luck with Miami clanging a couple of wide-open threes in transition.
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This victory was a little extra sweet for the Hawks, who were demolished by the Heat in the Playoffs last year however it is good to see that the team understands the job is not done yet. Trae Young had a great exchange with a reporter after the game who had asked whether the team would be celebrating tonight.
“What’s there to celebrate?” asked Young, to which the reporter sheepishly replied “Well, you made the playoffs.” Young calmly responded:
“That’s cool, that’s cool. It’s cool we made the playoffs… I’m happy for like Vit, guys like Saddiq who have never been in the playoffs, and some of the other rookies like AJ and guys who it’s their first time to experience the playoffs, but I mean for me, I’ve been in the playoffs now three times and a couple of guys have been in way more than I have, guys like Clint, and it’s cool to be in the playoffs – but you want to win games in the playoffs, you don’t want to just be here, so it’s important for us be locked in… it’s back to being focused on the next task”
The next task is the aforementioned Boston Celtics, who rank 2nd in the league in both offensive and defensive rating – they are the only team to rank in the top-5 in both categories. Needless to say, the Hawks will have their work cut out for them in this series, although if they can stick to their gameplan the way they did in Miami, anything is possible.
Tipoff for Game 1 is at 3:30 pm this Saturday on ESPN and Bally Sports. Welcome to the Postseason!
