Peachtree Hoops: Pelicans stifle Hawks in home loss

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Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images

Against a playoff calibre opponent, the Hawks fell short on Sunday.

The Atlanta Hawks were unable to add to their recent form as they fell to a double-digit loss at home to the New Orleans Pelicans, 116-103, on Sunday night at State Farm Arena.

Bogdan Bogdanovic led the Hawks with 25 points with Dejounte Murray adding 23 points and 11 assists. For the Pelicans, Trey Murphy III led with 28 points off the bench. Zion Williamson added 27 points.

Since Trae Young has been sidelined by injury, the Hawks haven’t played what you could consider a quality opponent. The teams they’ve faced so far have either been ravaged with injury, such as New York and Cleveland, or are lottery-bound teams. New Orleans represented the first team that wasn’t either of those two things and...the Hawks were promptly run out of their building in the first half of this game, falling down by as many as 20 points in the first half before the Hawks stabilized and trimmed the lead down to 11 points heading into the locker room at the half.

In the early exchanges, the Pelicans found very easy success getting into and scoring in the paint — 16 of their first 21 points were in the paint.

Zion Williamson does Zion Williamson things, and once he gets a head of steam he can be pretty difficult to stop:

The Pelicans made the most of their fastbreak opportunities in the first half, with C.J. McCollum getting all the way to the rim in transition:

After an Atlanta miss at the rim, the Pelicans push in transition with Naji Marshall who finds Williamson with the ally-oop:

It’s hard to stop Williamson when he’s on the run like this and gets up in the air.

He would return the favor in the second quarter for Murphy III after an Atlanta turnover:

The Pelicans were just superior at almost every single position and matchup, Brandon Ingram easily driving by De’Andre Hunter as he rejects the screen and powers home the finish at the rim:

Onyeka Okongwu continues to be missed as Bruno Fernando completely loses track of Larry Nance Jr., who gets to the dunker spot and duly finishes:

Nance would then use his physicality to his advantage as he easily establishes position inside on Murray and finishes at the rim:

The Pelicans had a seven-point lead with 10:18 remaining in the second quarter, and it was at this point where Murphy III went on an absolute tear to open this game up for the Pelicans, scoring the Pelicans next 13 points to take the lead to 18 points leading to an Atlanta timeout.

The Pelicans had threatened to blow this game open the second outside shots started falling in addition to these easy baskets in the paint, and that’s exactly how it transpired.

“He made some shots and it’s tough with that kind of range and height,” said Hawks head coach Quin Snyder of Murphy III. “When you’re shifted, whether it’s Zion or Brandon Ingram in isolation situations and you want to help and they spread out you’re in a closeout situation you need to get out there. In some of those, you have to get a great contest which is hard with his height. I thought his bank shot took it out of us too; we felt like we had a good possession. They’re hard to guard, give them credit. We’ve seen that, we knew what we were facing defensively as well. They have some really good on-ball defenders.”

The Hawks really posed little threat the remaining way of the game other than Bogdanovic having success from three but the lead only fell below 10 once in the second half and that came in the opening stages of the third. After that, the Pelicans lead grew to its largest margin of 22 points and the Pelicans easily secured the double-digit victory.

The Hawks struggled for efficiency for much of the game, eventually cracking 40+ percent shooting from the field with 41.8% for the game. The Hawks were faced with a lot of contested shots last night as the Pelicans are an upgrade on Memphis in just about every single way.

Dejounte Murray in particular found this to be the case. After scoring 41 points against Memphis, Murray scored 23 points but did so on 7-of-20 from the field after struggling to overcome the defensive presence of Herb Jones.

Jones did an excellent job contesting Murray’s shots, including this three-point attempt:

Murray tries to operate inside but Jones strips him on the way up and is credited for the block:

Murray, again, tries to hoist a shot through the contest of Jones but to no avail:

Murray this time gets deeper into the lane but runs into the same issue with the same result:

Some perhaps ill-advised shots there from Murray when it was clear Jones was going to get in a good contest, but it was a difficult matchup for Murray — Jones is a fantastic defender.

Snyder was pleased with the Hawks’ efforts to get into the paint and put pressure on the rim — as Murray tried to do — even as the game got away from the hosts.

“We struggled early when the game opened up,” said Snyder of the Hawks’ shots. “I thought we did a good job of continuing to compete and play, we got down 20 at one point. We talk a lot about breaking the paint, attacking the rim, when we did that we were able to generate better looks with our execution. Something we’ll keep doing and continue to take and get each other open looks and keep attacking the rim and breaking the paint.”

The Hawks tried to mix things up running a zone defense on occasion — the Pelicans also joined them on that front — but the Hawks didn't quite enjoy the same success using it as the visitors.

“They had a rhythm,” said Snyder of running zone defense. “Sometimes even shooters, when you get in the zone, it’s a situation that wouldn’t necessarily make sense when they have shooting on the floor, but sometimes the shots are a little different. That was something you try to do to change the rhythm of the game a little bit. Eventually they see enough and they start to attack it more and that’s what happened.”

There's not too much to get into from the Hawks' side of things last night. They ran into a playoff team, a healthy playoff team, and the result was as should have been expected. With Young, Johnson and Okongwu all out, the Hawks were outmanned and outclassed at multiple positions.

A Hawk who convincingly won his matchup was Clint Capela, who did very well with his matchup (scoring 18 points on 9-of-13 from the field to go with 14 rebounds) and made life more difficult for Williamson at times while also providing a presence on the offensive glass, grabbing six offensive boards. Other than that, it was slim pickings for the Hawks last night offensively.

Vit Krejci started at forward as Jalen Johnson recovers from his ankle injury, and Krejci had some good moments in his limited time. He turned down shots he could have easily taken himself and set up his teammates for high percentage shots instead.

“He had a couple of open ones (shots) but if he’s passing the ball to Bogi for the same look I think that’s the right play,” said Snyder of Krejci. “You want him to attack but there’s a lot of ways to attack. He’s able to make plays for other people. That helps us. When he’s in the starting lineup he can do that for other guys in the team and I thought he did a good job moving his feet.”

However, the Hawks could be dealt further losses as Saddiq Bey went down on a play in the fourth quarter and was in quite considerable pain.

Postgame, Snyder was unable to offer an update on Bey and the Hawks will be hoping that Bey, a constant presence for the Hawks amidst all their injuries at the forward spot, won't be sidelined for a prolonged period of time.

It certainly isn’t ideal as the Hawks now embark on a five-game Western Conference road trip. The Hawks will hope Bey’s injury isn’t too serious and that Johnson and Okongwu can return soon.

For the game itself, it was as could have been predicted. The Pelicans are currently in the 5-seed in the West and headed for an automatic playoff berth ahead now two games ahad of of the Phoenix, Sacramento, Dallas, Lakers, Warriors scramble and are playing very good basketball. With the Hawks being as short as they are on personnel, a 13-point loss is respectable enough given the circumstances.

Going forward, little changes for the Hawks going forward towards the postseason. They’re 3.5 games up on the Nets, two behind the Bulls who in turn are four games behind Miami for the 8-seed. Unless the Nets go on a run and the Hawks crash, Atlanta is all but set for a Play-In matchup against the Bulls.

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The Hawks (29-35) are back in action for the first game of that five-game trip on Wednesday night against the Portland Trail Blazers (18-45).

Until next time...

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