Cavaliers 110 Hawks 96

Boxscore

Gameflow

Most of my thoughts can be found in the comments of the game thread from last night. Best not to draw too many conclusions from a blowout loss on the road, with an injury ravaged frontcourt, on the back end of a back-to-back, and against a better team. So just a couple thoughts on events which transpired after I called of my live commenting upon Mario West's appearance in the third quarter of the game.

Acie Law IV played pretty well in semi-garbage time. I have some concerns about his ability to finish often enough the good shots he creates for himself. What real use is getting to the elbow for an open 15-footer or getting to the rim if you can't finish consistently? A better problem than not getting yourself an open shot in the first place, to be sure, but something I'll be watching as he (one hopes) gets more frequent and longer stretches running the point in relief of Mike Bibby.

Related to the above paragraph, if Acie Law proves himself a decent backup point guard and Flip Murray continues to look less able defensively the more you watch him play do you then demote Flip Murray to Mario West's role and add Thomas Gardner to the active roster and use him to spread the floor with the second unit? Gardner has no real value other than shooting three-pointers but that puts him one up on West.

I'd take the Hawks' Offensive Efficiency number from last night with a grain of salt. They scored 56 of their 96 points in final 17:02 after falling behind by 28 points and never, despite that uptick in scoring, got closer than 11.

Mike Woodson on the Cavs (and implicitly on the Hawks):

"They look great. They're one of the top teams in the East. They have a legitimate shot to get to the finals. You have to play at a high level when you're playing those teams.''

Joe Johnson:

"It was a tough night."

Acie Law, ostensibly on the second unit as a whole but speaking in terms that only apply to himself and Mo Evans:

"We just tried to bring some energy. And with what we ask of our starters every night, the way we play, especially on a back-to-back, they’re going to be asked to do a lot. It was all we could do to try and crank the energy up. When you start in a 9-point or 11-point hole, or whatever it was, you look up and realize we just don’t have it tonight. So we were just trying to do our job as a bench and bring some energy and fill in where we could for the starters.”

With two more off days to follow this one, I'll spend the pre-Thanksgiving portion of the week assessing the Hawks through 13 games.