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The Atlanta Hawks left Detroit and traveled to Washington, D.C. on Saturday night to face off against the 6-5 Wizards at the Capital One Arena. The Hawks have played much better of late and have been giving teams about all they can handle.
The Hawks inactives for Friday’s game were DeAndre Bembry, who is rehabbing a broken wrist, and Miles Plumlee could return any day after dealing with a hamstring strain the last month. Ersan Ilyasova will continue to miss time with a bone bruise on his knee hindering him. Also on the injury report was Dennis Schroder, Marco Belinelli and Malcolm Delaney who all played tonight.
The Hawks came out with a pretty good defensive effort in the first quarter with John Collins getting a lot of playing time early. Marco Belinelli came in with some instant offense and helped the Hawks on the way to a 1-point deficit at the end of the first quarter, 20-19.
Coming into the second quarter, the Hawks played even better defense forcing the Wizards into some tough shots and some great perimeter defense. Malcolm Delaney absolutely went off in the second quarter with some very smooth three pointers and ended the quarter with 11 points. John Wall and Markieff Morris really kept the Wizards close in the second quarter and the Hawks gave up some points late in the quarter to go into the break down 49-42.
Atlanta came out alittle flat in the third quarter on the offensive end and Bradley Beal went off early in the quarter giving the Wizards a huge lift. For the Hawks Dewayne Dedmon had a really effective third quarter as he has done the whole season and kept the Hawks close. The Hawks went into the fourth quarter hoping for a comeback down 76-67.
The Hawks had a deadful start to the fourth quarter as the wizards went on a 14-2 run to open up a 21 point lead. The Hawks simply could not find ways to score in the fourth quarter with some silly turnovers and overall sloppy play on both ends of the floor. Kelly Oubre had a big scoring quarter for the Wizards and they went on to get the win.
For the Hawks, the only real bright spots were Marco Belinelli, Malcolm Delaney and Dewayne Dedmon. John Collins scored just two points and fellow rookie got some playing time late and had 3 assists.
The Hawks play again Monday night against the Pelicans. Stay tuned!