There have been wins, oughta-wins, shoulda-wons, and sure-would-be-nice opportunities to win. But for the Atlanta Hawks, there haven’t been any true Must-Wins on their schedule. Until now.

The fortunes of the Brooklyn Nets, this season and next, bear significant impacts on the organizational fate of the Hawks. Atlanta will have exactly three opportunities to influence Brooklyn’s ultimate standing in the league this season. In two weeks, they’ll be together in London just in time for a spot of tea. And they have two chances in Brownstone Country, on the herringbone floor of the Barclays Center, once in April and once tonight (7:30 PM Eastern, SportSouth, YES Network).

We have Danny Ferry and Brooklyn’s Joe Johnson to thank for these opportunities. The options to swap draft choices with Brooklyn in 2014 and 2015 didn’t seem terribly significant back in the summer of 2012, when Billy King acquired the six-time All-Star from Atlanta, pairing him with Deron Williams and Brook Lopez and set his Russian mogul owner’s nine-digit championship dreams in motion.

Those options caused nary a stir this summer, either, when King went after veterans Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry, and Andrei Kirilenko, trying to heighten the chances for Mikhail Prokhorov’s Eastern Promises to come to fruition.

But as it stands, even on a two-game losing streak, it’s the Hawks, not the Nets, who remain almost stuck in the third spot of the Eastern Conference, a testament to the competitive spirit instilled by new Head Coach Mike Budenholzer. Meanwhile, the Nets, despite winning two straight, are on the outside of the playoff picture looking in. And Hawks fans are salivating. If the Nets stand pat in the East through the spring, they could bring the Hawks no worse than the 11^th pick in a reasonably loaded NBA draft.

With the lower crust of the East so densely packed together in the NBA standings, three wins by the Hawks over the Nets could mean the difference between drafting Jabari Parker and Montrezl Harrell this June, or between Joel Embiid, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Jusuf Nurkic. Atlanta (18-16) won’t have Al Horford around to help their cause, but Brooklyn (12-21) has to make do without their leading scorer and rebounder as well (Brook Lopez).

Tonight’s affair will be all about control and composure, particularly from the starting point guards. D-Will (13.6 PPG, 6.9 APG) has been maligned for his conditioning and leadership, but he ranks third in the NBA for assist percentage (41.4 assists per 100 possessions), just a couple ticks ahead of fifth-place Jeff Teague (39.2 assists per 100). Williams leads Net starters with 47.6 FG%, but without Lopez he desperately needs a big man he can count on to get decent post position and put the ball in the hoop.

D-Will has been trying to put a kibosh on recent rumors about persistent soreness in his left ankle, largely to avoid media panic in NYC. But medical staff sent him off to doctors today to get checked out. While he is a gametime decision for tonight, chances are good he’ll play, as Tyshawn Taylor has been assigned to the D-League today, and “Jason Terry, ballhandler” doesn’t instill a lot of confidence these days.

Last year, future Hall of Famer Jason Kidd was Williams’ crosstown point guard rival. Now he’s guiding Williams as his head coach, insistent on a plodding pace of heavily-halfcourt basketball (91.9 possessions per 48 minutes, 25^th in NBA; 8.8 fastbreak PPG, 29^th in NBA) to allow several past-their-prime veterans to keep up. Teague and Shelvin Mack can alter Brooklyn’s plans dramatically by pushing the ball up court in transition. But finishing in the paint and ball control remains important. The Hawks are 7-2 when Teague keeps from turning the ball over more than twice.

The Nets defense (109.5 opponent points per 100 possessions, 3^rd worst in NBA) may indeed be the elixir for Kyle Korver’s shooting woes (12-for-40 on threes in his last six games). Foes have had an easier time catching up to the Threaker lately, without Horford around to set useful screens. However, Brooklyn opponents shoot a league-high 39.4 3FG%, and the Nets are particularly vulnerable above the break (39.8 opponent 3FG% above-the-break, highest in NBA). That could also be good news for Cartier Martin (49.1 above-the-break 3FG%, 25.0% in the corners), who has connected on nine of his last 17 treys but has appeared just once (2-for-4 on threes in Boston last week) since returning last week from an injured ankle.

Also hoping for some positive production tonight is Lou Williams (4.3 PPG and 21.7 FG% in his last 3 games), who tore his ACL on this very floor last January to conclude his season. Having returned perhaps too far ahead of schedule, Lou’s hindered mobility has not helped him to score on drives as much as he used to, so he is settling for three-point shots (51.6% of his FG attempts) at a proportion way above his career rate of 29.5%. The Hawks may want to deploy Williams more as a cutter and allow him to earn trips to the free throw stripe (81.5 FT%). His free throw rate of 0.198 attempts per field goal attempt is just barely over half of his sixth-man-stud career rate.

Underlying the attention placed on Joe Johnson’s clutchiness, helping Brooklyn avoid a third-straight loss with a buzzer beater in Oklahoma City on Thursday, as well as his three-point bonanza against defensively hapless Philly last month, has been Joe’s woeful offense recently. Johnson has shot just 15-for-50 (30.0 FG%; 7.0 PPG) from the floor in the last five games, including 4-for-26 from three-point range. Versus Cleveland on Saturday, two points on 1-for-7 shooting was all he could muster in nearly 35 minutes.

To avoid the wrath of a Russian sickle, King and Kidd must get the NBA's highest-salaried team into the East's Top 8, if not Top 5, by season's end. It goes without saying that for Brooklyn to have any shot at a postseason berth in the dreadful East, D-Will has to find a way to get Joe, for now the team’s leading scorer without Lopez, going on a steadier basis. Also, perhaps not since his rookie year in Boston has Johnson been as underutilized as a passer (2.6 APG). Johnson, Pierce, and the recently returning Kirilenko can be useful passers in halfcourt sets if D-Will has to miss any significant time.

Beverage-spilling ploys aside, Brooklyn’s chances of staying competitive in any game rest heavily on their ability to draw the referees’ attention. Their 26.0 free throw attempts per game leads the East, despite their slow pace of play. By comparison, only Miami takes fewer field goals (78.0 FGAs/game), but unlike the HEAT, the Nets’ 44.4 FG% is subpar, particularly inside the arc.

Paul Pierce (career-low 12.9 PPG and 40.0 FG%; 33.7 3FG% a ten-year low) exemplifies the Nets offense. His scoring average jumps to 18.0 PPG when he gets at least six free throw attempts. Brooklyn is 2-9 when Pierce (85.3 FT%, 18^th in NBA) gets fewer than four attempts, and 0-6 when he gets no more than two free throw shots. The Hawks’ forwards (Paul Millsap, in particular) must force off-balance shots from Pierce without drawing unnecessary contact, and cut off his drives to the hoop from the perimeter, something he has been apt to try a lot recently.

For Millsap, the double-double machine, continuing to avoid fouling out is a higher priority than worrying about his offensive inefficiency (8-for-32 combined against Golden State and Chicago, his worst shooting efforts this season), although the Hawks are just 1-6 when he shoots under 35 percent.

In addition to Pierce at power forward, Kidd is also experimenting with Shaun Livingston at shooting guard, shifting Joe to the three-spot. Mr. Livingston, I presume, knows he’s no more reliable a shooter (4-for-15 as a starter in his last two games; five three-point shots all season) than Johnson, but he can be used as a secondary distributor to take some of the ballhandling pressure off of Williams. He is yet another Net who can generate offense with trips to the free throw line (87.5 FT%, 10^th in NBA). Kidd will continue rotating Livingston, Alan Anderson, and Mirza Teletovic at the wing positions, alongside Johnson or Pierce, until he finds something consistently effective.

Is Mirza Teletovic the Bosnian translation of Mike Scott? Teletovic, like Scott, can give you buckets in short order, yet the Monstar from Mostar struggles mightily to stop anyone assigned to him on defense. In a low-scoring, grindingly slow contest, introducing either one of these two forwards will provide a burst of much needed energy to the game, probably enough for both teams. There might be Tecmo Bowl-scale numbers put up if both are on the floor for any significant stretch of time.

Gustavo Ayón and Pero Antić are the Euroballers particularly susceptible to the mind tricks of Kevin Garnett and Reggie Evans. The cagey KG (career-low 6.4 PPG and 36.7 FG%; 2.9 PF/game) has shifted back to the starting center role in the absence of Lopez, and leads the league in defensive rebounding percentage (31.3%). Evans started in Garnett’s place in Saturday’s win, effectively neutralizing Cleveland’s Andy Varejao. Whichever of Garnett or Evans is in the game should dictate which end of the floor the Hawks’ pivot men should be crashing and exploiting. The Nets are near the basement in second chance points (9.5 per game, 29^th in NBA), and Evans probably accounts for half of these.

Play well tonight, Atlanta Hawks! Your future superstar teammate is depending on you!

Go Hawks!

~lw3