Recap: Hawks 100, Cavs 82 (or, Stag at Sharkey’s)

This game was more rockfight than chess match. An ugly, low-scoring affair, the kind of game in which these Cavs might have a chance of pulling out a win. Unfortunately Cleveland lost its mojo in the fourth quarter and lost badly. 

A brief scouting report on the Hawks prior to this Cavs matchup on March 14 might be useful for understanding how this happened. 

The Hawks have been on a tear since firing their head coach, Lloyd Pierce, just prior to the All Star Break. Going with Nate McMillan at the helm, they had won four in in a row prior to meeting Cleveland. Ominously for Cleveland, the Hawks had shown a tendency in recent games to turn on the jets in the fourth quarter. In their prior fourth quarters against Orlando, they came back coming back from 14 down, and came back from 15 down in the final frame against Toronto on March 12, prior to meeting the Cavs. Trae Young, meanwhile, was leading the NBA in fourth quarter points with an 8.7 average, and dropped 37 against the Raptors.

Watching how the Hawks racked up 37 points in the fourth quarter and ended up beating Toronto on a last second shot from Tony Snell was instructive. This was the Hawks’ first game back from the break, but they didn’t have far to go: The Raptors are playing this season in Tampa, where the irony of having “the North” emblazoned in multilingual splendor around the edge of the court is probably not lost on the “home” team.

In beating the Raptors, the Hawks had to fight through Kyle Lowry’s clutch shots and another monster game from Chris Boucher, who himself is an amazing story of a working-class struggle upwards from Montreal Nord. McMillan tends to go with a lineup of Huerter, Snell, Capella, Collins, and Young down the stretch, with some active subbing between Gallinari and Capella as the game slows down. Huerter, the Maryland 3^rd year player, gets a lot of usage and in this game was assigned with guarding Kyle Lowry.

Toronto looked really uneven — in spite of Lowry and Boucher’s heroics, Baynes was absolutely washed. Norm Powell managed to single-handedly lose this game for the Raptors, notching a turnover, two missed free throws, and missing a wide-open Lowry on Toronto’s last possession, all in the last minute of play. But it’s not as if he did it in a vacuum; the Hawks were playing good system defense and even Gallinari was moving his feet.

Coaching matters. When McMillan comes out of a timeout, there tends to be a workable plan in place. Against Toronto, this involved Collins setting a pick for Trae at the bottom of the logo, giving him a lot of real estate to work with. McMillan asked for review of an out of bounds call with 26.9 seconds. which got him another timeout to review with team. When the Raptors made some critical errors, the Hawks were in a position to win — they had made fewer mistakes.

So in looking at the Cavs defeat to the Hawks, it is worth looking at how we got to the fourth quarter, and what happened in that frame. It isn’t enough to just have experience, you have to have experience in managing close games — this goes for the coaching staff and the players alike. This game demonstrated that the Cavs have a lot of work to do in this area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYjtwOzgvuI

As the Cavs-Hawks game started, the Gallinari-Kevin Love matchup was the one to watch. Unfortunately Love looked about ready to fall over one minute into the game, taking an awkward step at the free throw circle on defense and swooning off-balance. As he ran up the court about 1:30 into regulation, he seemed to wince and asked to come out after a stoppage of play.

This left Gallinari as the perennial old guy at the Y. At one point he beat Okoro — who picked up two quick fouls in this game — for a rebound with sheer height. Gallo is an elite FT shooter (94 percent) who averages 12 points a game; he was in a starting role in this game as Capella was out. 

A few words about Quinn Cook, who had made his debut for the Cavs in the prior match against New Orleans. Although he was totally small compared to Kevin Huerter and seems like a defensive liability, he turned the corner on a pull up and started making shots. Some scoring was needed, as exemplified by a random Jarrett Allen 3-point attempt that bounced out, and the fact that the Cavs had a grand total of 8 points after 7 minutes of play.

Cook doesn’t make perfect decisions. At one point he went for a ball going out of bounds, resulting in a turnover. He then got skied over by Bogdan Bogdonovic who got a rebound and bucket. Cook never seems fazed by defensive breakdowns, however, and sped back to get 2 points with a canny different stop-start rhythm than Sexton. Since his arrival, Damyean Dotson has become dormant Dotson, and JB seems to see what Cook can do in running the offense when Garland is out. At least fast and shifty, Cook obliged by burying a nice rhythm corner 3.

Here are Damyean Dotson's stats for the last three weeks or so. He put in a crucial performance in a big win against Philadelphia https://t.co/TPFix2BAqs but other than that not a lot of success, and Quinn Cook seems to be eating his minutes. pic.twitter.com/tAIVEV4H8k

— Adam John Cathcart (@CathcartNBA) March 17, 2021

Larry Nance, Jr., had a nice game within a game against John Collins, and seemed locked in while the Hawks started to lose focus. JaVale McGee decided to go one-on-four and hit a turnaround midranger, and then smothered a shot by Rondo. 

The Cavs are 28^th in the league in 3 point shooting, but near the end of the quarter, Darius responded to a Gallo triple (over the shorter Cook, of course) by draining a three; he’s 38% from range this year. 

End of First: Cavs 22, Hawks 26

JB stuck with a lineup of Wade, MGee, Ceci, Darius, Winder to start the quarter. JaVale made yet another gorgeous turnaround rainbow 2; Okoro shook his head on the bench and laughed. The Cavs were on a 12-0 run culminated by a Darius breakaway, but the momentum got choked when JaVale tried an open 3. He’s made 10 in his whole career. As the Hawks tried to respond, Windler blocked Collins, moving laterally and brandishing his hands like a king crab staking out some territory. The pace got very slow and the Cavs ended up with shot clock violations on two successive possessions.

End of Second: Cavs 46, Hawks 49

The Cavs were woeful from the line, and Larry did not play particularly well. At one point Nance got lost in no-man’s land, and Gallo got an unchallenged baseline dunk. Sexton made it clear everyone could take a few possessions off, but then apropos of nothing he decided he wants to distribute, at one point throwing the ball to goes off of Allen’s ‘fro. Okoro had some good minutes and got a nice bucket after a no-look pass from Garland, putting the Cavs ahead.

Cedi did mercurial Cedi things, making a wild drive and nearly losing the ball on one possession, then hitting a cold-blooded curl around 3 on the next, shooting with such accuracy that the net didn’t move. After the Hawks made a run, Wade smothered Bogdonovich, and Sexton got a little chippy with the Hawks’ free agent. A final possession of the quarter saw the Cavs in default mode, going with Sexton and a high pick, no movement on the wings. 

Nathan Knight was having a tremendous game, blocking shots and hit a 3 at one point, with 10 plus points off the bench through the third. He would continue his dominance into the fourth. 

End of Third: Hawks 69-Cavs 66

The Cavs bit the dust in the fourth quarter of this game. The Cavs were getting dominated by Nathan Knight, a role player. Cleveland finally made a first basket more than four minutes into the quarter with a wild drive by Okoro, who seemed fed up. You have to wonder if the Cavs had done their homework, or if it simply didn’t matter what they knew about the McMillian Hawks and their penchant or methods for torching defenses in the fourth quarter. For a higher quality fourth quarter, it might be wiser to see how Toronto lost by a whisker rather than this poor showing in the final frame by Cleveland — or one could head to the Cleveland Museum of Art to take a more extended look at the beauty and brutality of Stag at Sharkey’s.

Final score: Hawks 100, Cavs 82