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The All-star break is over and it's time to get back to business. The week started and... business was bad. Very bad. Terrible in a Charles-Barkley-"turrbl" way. At the end of the week, the Hawks still pulled out two wins after that turrbl loss. Do you want the bad news first? Doesn't matter. I can't hear you. Let's start there.
1. The third quarter against Toronto was historically bad.
We could honestly count the ways Friday's game was bad, but few stats can compare to this one. The Hawks only scored 13 points while giving up 28 to the Raptors. Scoring that few while being outscored by 15 or more hasn't happened to us all year long - you have to go back to April of last year to find an egg like that. In fact, it has only happened 98 times in franchise history and in those 98 games, only 10 times were the Hawks able to weather an atrocious quarter like that to pull out the win. Not to bring you more bad news, but...
2. It was a bad week for threes.
In every game this week (going back to last Friday night), the Hawks attempted 30 threes. In two of those games, they didn't crack double digits in makes. As a team, Atlanta shoots 38.3 percent from long distance. This past week saw them shoot 29.1 from behind the arc, which is worse than Josh Smith did his last year in a Hawks uniform (ouchtown, population: Hawks). Even Kyle Korver shot a pedestrian 33 percent over that span. Everyone did start warming up a little against Dallas, though, which leads me to say...
3. The Dallas game was a marked improvement and a step in the right direction.
It was their best three-point shooting night of this week, and most importantly, they racked up 28 assists. You have to go back to the win against Golden State early in the month to find a game where they put up that many. In Atlanta's last three losses, they averaged less than 20 assists per game, but in the last three wins, they have averaged more than 25. The Dallas game marked a return to form for these share-first Hawks. It was also the first game after the All-star break where they scored 100 points. Another huge positive from the Dallas game was that...
4. In a game that featured Dirk Nowitzki, Dennis Schröder was the best German on the court.
When Schröder entered the game, the Hawks were down 22-13. He then proceeded to carve up the Mavs over 21 minutes of court time as he provided a dizzying array of drives, assists, and bombing threes (by the way, Schröder somehow weathered our bad three week: he has shot 50 percent over the past three games). The Hawks held Nowitzki to just seven shots and only two makes, which is only the third time he's been held to just seven shots while playing at least 25 minutes and only the eighth time this season he's been held to under 30 percent shooting. Dallas bring out the attack mode in Schröder: in the two games against Dallas this year, Schröder took at least 15 shots (the only two games he's taken that many) and made at least seven in each.
5. The Hawks coughed the ball up 20 times against the Bucks and STILL WON.
If the Dallas win was a solid return to form, the win against the Bucks was an aberration. The Hawks committed 20 turnovers and STILL pulled out the win. That is a first for Atlanta this year and you have to go back to December 2013 to find a time when that happened. Even stranger, Milwaukee has had at least 20 turnovers and won six times this year!
Korver watch: .500 FG% / .506 3FG% / .904 FT%
If you hear or come up with your own cool stat about the Hawks, tweet to @peachtreehoops or directly at me at @themarkphelps or leave a comment. I used basketball-reference.com's search engine for some of these stats. It's a useful tool.