Why Quin Snyder believes Atlanta can’t ‘pay off’ a 52-point quarter

ATLANTA, Ga. – Not all halves are created equal in the game of basketball, but there can be patterns in how the results happen. In two of the last three games for Atlanta Hawks, they gave 80 points in the first half. The first was against the Los Angeles Lakers, where Luka Doncic, Jake LaRavia and Gabe Vincent barely missed a three-pointer in the first half.

The Hawks repeated the same feat in a loss to the Boston Celtics, but it was Sam Houser who did all the work from the three-point line, knocking down seven of his eight attempts before halftime. When you looked at the scoreboard, Hawks were down 82-51.

The Celtics had 52 points in the second quarter alone.

While everything seemed to be going well for the team on the road, it was a struggle for the Hawks. They couldn’t get a single shot to fall. The rotations were a step slower, leading to big threes for Hauser. Even when the Hawks did everything right, the Celtics still shot over their defenders.

“We can’t give up a 52-point quarter,” the head coach Quinn Snyder he said after the game. “That’s maybe all I have to say. Our competitive focus on the defensive end during that stretch in particular isn’t where it needs to be, and it’s resulted in a lot of breakdowns and executions, and they’ve made us pay for it. I think it’s important that we understand that this is a process to the extent that we’re really focused on the things we’re doing, I think we know we know.

“Some games that you say blow them off. Blow it off when the game is kind of looking at it and trying to understand it, it might not affect you to get better. I don’t think this is one of those games. We have to understand why it happened, and that’s part of our situation.”

The Hawks put up another 80 points in the half

As for the players, they know they have to do a better job of locking down the defense to avoid giving up too many points in a short amount of time.

“They were too comfortable; we need to be more physical at the point of contact,” CJ McCollum said. “We’re closing in on guys. They get offensive rebounds, get points in transition, a lot of threes, and when they get going, it’s an avalanche.”

“We’ve got to do a better job of passing forward, trying to get a shot across the court and take advantage of transition opportunities. I don’t think we had a lot of stops early in the game. The better our defense is, the better our offense is going to be.”

There didn’t seem to be any single stat that made the biggest difference in the game for the Hawks, just that the Celtics were super efficient from the field. When you actually look at how it played out, it’s obvious that the team has some things going against them. They still are introducing new players to the teamand I really didn’t get a chance to do that after traveling from the West Coast.

The Hawks also haven’t practiced much since the start of the year due to their schedule. At the same time, the team knows they need to play better than they did against the Celtics and their previous two losses.