ATLANTA – Just another NBA Judgment Day. This time, it’s the Hawks facing a crucial situation in only the second leg of a seven-game series.
“Game 1 was very important to us but [tonight] is going to be do or die. Whatever we have to do to win the ball game, we’re going to have to do it. We need every energy we have to fight on the floor. I don’t care about the rest of the series. I want to take care of tomorrow first,” stressed center Dikembe Mutombo following the Hawks’ practice yesterday at the Georgia Dome here, the site of tonight’s Game 2 little Armageddon.
“It would be extremely tough for us to lose two games and then go up there and try to stay alive in the series,” acknowledged forward Tyrone Corbin in discussing the zippy feeling of going into the Garden down 0-2. “We know we HAVE to get this game.”
And in order to earn the split down here, the Hawks know it might not be a bad idea to do something about the scoring feast unleashed by Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston, who totaled 65 points in the Knicks’ 100-92 Game 1 party. But there is a bit of a dilemma. The Hawks would like to get physical. Problem was, when they tried it Tuesday, they got into foul trouble. Serious foul trouble.
“You definitely have to be physical but me having four fouls at the beginning of the third quarter, I couldn’t get physical and Chris Crawford had four fouls, too,” sighed Steve Smith, the only Hawk offensively equipped to combat either Houston or Sprewell (but not both).
But it wasn’t their offense that bothered the Hawks. It was their overall defense, not so much individually but collectively.
“Our defense, it wasn’t there. It just wasn’t there,” Mookie Blaylock said.
“What did we do on defense?” asked Smith. “Nothing. They hit every shot. We gave up so many easy looks.”
So guess what Lenny Wilkens stressed during the Hawks’ film session and subsequent practice yesterday? Wilkens watched the game film in horror and confirmed what he had witnessed first hand the night before.
“Not getting back. Not blocking out. The rotations were poor,” Wilkens said.
No one’s perfect. Aside from those little points, the Hawks were solid. So for tonight, the Hawks want to be the aggressors and dictate the tempo of the game. The Hawks all year defended, rebounded and ran opportunistically. In Game 1, they did none of that and the Knicks had the tempo – and the scoreboard – decidedly on their side.
“We want to be desperate but not in a hurry. You want to play like it’s your life on the line but not really rush it every time,” Corbin said. “They got off to a great start. You get shooters or scorers off to a roll like they got early, it’s tough. You’ve got to make them work a little hard for everything they get, push them out a little further and give them different looks. As a team we have to help more because they got off to a good roll.”
One other area where the Hawks were decidedly deficient was rebounding. The loss of usual starting four Alan Henderson hurts, but Mutombo and Grant Long are exceptional rebounders. Those two combined for 20, but the rest of the Hawks managed a dozen as the Knicks led the glass war, 40-32.
