"We Laid An Egg": Hawks Fall Flat In Loss to Grizzlies

On the heels of its best two-game stretch of the season, Atlanta played one of its worst games of the season in a blowout loss to the Grizzlies.

ATLANTA — All the momentum the Hawks spent the last two games building up came crashing down on Monday night in a sluggish 127-88 loss to the Grizzlies. With a chance to win three games in a row for the first time all season, Atlanta came out with very little energy or rhythm and failed to capitalize on the few quality opportunities it did generate. Coming off two consecutive games of balanced scoring and sharp ball movement, not a single Hawk played well on Monday, and Atlanta resembled a team that had hardly shared the court with one another. Most notably, the Hawks did not bring the requisite energy to compete with a team in the midst of a playoff race.

“We laid an egg,” Kevin Huerter said. “We didn’t play defense, we didn’t get back, they killed us in transition, we couldn’t make a shot on the offensive end. There was really nothing we did well tonight.”

This was not a well-played basketball game in the first half, nor was it particularly compelling in its chaos. Both offenses looked slow and disjointed in the first 24 minutes, and frankly, each side had reason to be embarrassed. Atlanta had an early opportunity to jump on the Grizzlies, who scored just four points in the game’s first six minutes, but squandered that opportunity as its own offense stagnated. Both sides threw some truly perplexing passes and neither shot remotely well from the field. Each squad played poorly enough that a merely competent performance from the other could have created in a 15-point margin halftime margin. Instead, the Grizzlies led by three at the half, with no real momentum forming in either direction.

Only one team, however, came out of the break with a sense of urgency while the other continued to flail. Memphis pulled together to find a rhythm while the Hawks only continued to lose ground. The Grizzlies opened up a 20-3 run in the third to stretch their lead to 19, and the margin ballooned to as many as 41 before both sides effectively called it a night. Perhaps in attempt to send a message, Lloyd Pierce called timeout and pulled his starting five from the game just 6 minutes and 35 seconds into the second half, then yanked the starters again with 9:40 remaining in the game after a 10-2 start by the Grizzlies. 

Memphis shot 75 percent from the floor and 73 percent from beyond the arc over the final 12 minutes -- many of which they rendered academic with their work earlier in the half -- and outscored the Hawks 43-20 in the final period. With two of the team's best players sidelined, nine Grizzlies scored in double-figures as Memphis scored 1.23 points per possession for the game. Ja Morant, the likely Rookie of the Year, transformed into a different player during the third quarter, threading gorgeous yet practical passes to teammates and creatively darting his way to the rim. He finished with just 13 points and five assists, but by the time he checked out of the game for the final time in the third quarter, he had clearly been the best point guard on the court.

The Hawks thrived with Trae Young scoring below his average in the last two games, but he still helped the team with his passing and his shooting gravity in those contests. On Monday, he had one of his worst all-around games of the season and Atlanta couldn’t find the ancillary scoring to offset his struggles. Young finished with just 19 points and two assists -- his lowest marks since February 1, when he left the game against Dallas early with a sprained ankle. 

Atlanta’s sloppy and cavalier ball movement was no better encapsulated by Young’s occasionally reckless decision-making, and its lack of cohesion resulted in 17 turnovers as a team (including seven from Young) and worst shooting night of the season. Memphis clogged Atlanta’s driving lanes all night, and the Hawks shot just 12-of-28 at the rim and 8-of-25 from floater range. “It’s tough whenever they’ve got a lot of guards,” Young said. “We had to go two bigs, and they were just sinking into the paint, trying to contest all our floaters, all our shots at the rim.”

Young is now 8-of-41 from 3-point range in his last five games, and while that is likely an aberration in what has been a remarkable shooting season, any prolonged dry spell from him will require that his teammates carry more of the scoring load. Monday night, no one was up to the task. Huerter finished just 5-for-14 for 13 points while De’Andre Hunter and Bruno Fernando shot a combined 4-of-19 from the field. John Collins was Atlanta’s most efficient starter with 12 points on 4-of-11 shooting and the bench provided very little.

Despite those dreadful shooting numbers, the Hawks generated acceptable shots on most of their possessions. Teams and stars occasionally go cold, and Atlanta will live with some bad luck, frustrating though it may be. It was their approach to the game that most bothered the Hawks. They came out flat and never found the intensity to climb back into the game when it was still close. To borrow a favorite phrase of Pierce's, his team did not compete. 

“This is a game you throw in the trash,” Young said. “You can’t really watch film on this. All you can really do is reflect on your energy, reflect on how hard you competed.”

Atlanta won’t find much encouragement reflecting on this game. It was a regression to the lowest points of the season, when the Hawks routinely failed to play hard from one game to the next. When asked whether the blowout could be a teachable moment for a young team in search of consistency, Pierce rebuffed the notion. “I don’t know what to teach,” he said. “You can’t teach effort. You can talk about it. Effort is effort.”

The Hawks have three days off before visiting the Wizards on Friday, and will hope to have Dewayne Dedmon and Cam Reddish -- both of whom missed Monday’s game -- back in the lineup by then. Atlanta was clearly thin on bodies against Memphis, and while that alone didn’t account for the final margin of victory, Pierce will be relieved when he finally has a more complete rotation at his disposal.

Mondays’ loss isn’t cause for panic, but it should serve as a reminder of what it requires to consistently compete in the NBA. The only way forward is processing the defeat, and moving on from it. Atlanta will travel to Memphis Saturday night for a rematch with the Grizzlies, fully understanding what sort of threat they pose.

“It’s gotta be fuel to us. It’s gotta be motivating,” Young said. “We just gotta be more ready to compete. They play really hard. From the first guy to the 15th, they play super hard, and if you don’t match their competitiveness and how hard they play, you can get beat by them.”