HAWKS 113, MAVS 87

[Chicagojk]

The main difference was Capela. Once Luka got into the paint past Hunter, he released his man and protected the paint. Great defensive team effort from Hawks in these situations to switch around. With an elite blocker (and we have seen this stragegy before also with how  Zubac was used) that waits for Luka in the paint, its hard to score for Luka inside with an elite blocker waiting there. Luka correctly passed it out of the paint for the open shooter in these situations. But we didnt take advantage of that with the opens spaces, the cuts and shooting from outside that this left. There was plenty of room to take advantage of this agressive defensive strategy. The energy was not there in this game from Luka or anybode else perhaps. The whole team didnt look up to full speed.

 It is just one game and the Mavs did not play well but the Hawks looked really good.  What I keep coming back to is the positions of Powell and DFS in this game.   The Hawks have Capela play the same way as Powell plays.  He is just a superior defender and rebounder.   The difference really showed last night.

Same with Hunter and DFS.  Hunter is bigger than DFS but provides more offense.   We posted DFS 2-3 times last night.  While he had Trae on him, I counted those possessions as lost as soon as DFS got the ball.  I would think most teams would love it when the Mavs runs plays for DFS in the post.  Hopefully we don't see much of that.   

Those two positions between the two teams are glaring for me....at least in this one game.    Add to the fact of the scoring ATL has off the bench and those are the biggest differences between those teams.   I may venture to guess that Dallas would be the favorite for a title if you added Capela and Hunter to our team replacing DFS and Powell.