I picked the Hawks to beat the Brooklyn Nets in five games in their first-round series. The Hawks are/were/have been a very good team, winning 60 games and leading the league in win percentage for a large swath. They have great talent, great coaching, and have home court. The Nets won 38 games, fewer than the Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns who failed to make the playoffs, and as many as the Utah Jazz, most of whom are barely old enough to vote. They made the playoffs because the Pacers lost their last game and because Miami became an ER ward by the end of the year. They deserve credit for making it in, doing what they had to, but this was the reality of who they were.
This thing should have been a runaway and should already be over.
It is not, after the Nets tied the series 2-2 in Brooklyn on Monday night. Moreover, the Nets have now outscored the No.1 seed, 60-win Atlanta Hawks 394-393. Brooklyn has all the momentum, has controlled the pace and flow of this series, and if they were to win this series, it can no longer be considered a shock.
What's interesting is that you can see elements of two previous first-round upsets and a near-upset in what's going on. It's a perfect storm that Atlanta is facing, and their odds of surviving, to be honest, are not great. Here's a look back at comparable series and how they relate to this one.
THE BLUEPRINT -- PACERS-HAWKS 2014: My colleague Zach Harper has joked that the Hawks are just following the model that last year's Pacers set for them as the non-LeBron No.1 seed. Get off to a raucous hot start, impress everyone, look like a serious contender for the East, fade in the second half, struggle in the first-round with the 8th seed.
The Pacers were the No.1 seed in the East for nearly the entire year last season, and for a long stretch looked like a far superior team to James' Heat. But then in early February, the Pacers hit a slide that only worsened after the All-Star Break before they barely righted the ship to hold onto the No.1 seed.
They were built upon good talent with a few All-Star level players but no real superstars, played team basketball, and seemed limited in skill where the Hawks seem limited in size.
From February 1st through the end of the regular season of 2014, Indiana went 21-16. Good. But not great. The Hawks, from February 1st through the end of the 2015 regular season went 20-15. The Hawks outscored their opponents by 95 points, the Pacers were outscored by theirs by six points. The Hawks had a little better record and played considerably better. But it never felt like the early season again for the Pacers, who just hoped to turn it on. The Hawks did much of the same.
In the first round, the Pacers faced these same Hawks who were without Al Horford. The Hawks countered the Pacers' grind-it-out, inside style by playing Pero Antic, and going "five-out' using all shooters and forcing the Pacers to either concede open threes with Roy Hibbert in the game or abandon their best defensive strategy: funneling everything to Hibbert. The result was a first-round series that went seven games, and really had everyone believing that the Pacers were done as a title contender.
Much of this same dynamic is happening vs. the Nets, only it's reversed. The Nets are countering the Hawks' ball movement and instinctive play with size and one-on-one dynamics, making it into their individual skill and size vs. the Hawks' team-oriented dynamic. Brook Lopez has been huge, contesting floaters the Hawks usually easily get, and Thad Young overpowering individual defenders with his combination of touch and size. It's a weird reversal, but very reminiscent.
Of vital note: The Hawks lost that series as the 8th seed. Does that mean the Hawks lose this series? Or the 8th seed loses this series?
THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL -- GRIZZLIES-SPURS 2011: Lionel Hollins already has an 8th seed upset under his belt, when in the moment that "Grit Grind" took national attention for Memphis, his Grizzlies felled the mighty Spurs, despite San Antonio having home court, the best players, and, you know, being the Spurs. Hollins is facing a Popovich disciple in Mike Budenholzer, and he's using a lot of the same strategies.
One thing Memphis did to muck up the Spurs' ball movement that year was to jam the passing lanes. So much NBA defense is built around position-oriented defense, being able to challenge. But being in good defensive spacing, without gambling, and playing passing lanes, again, without gambling, just screws with systems like Atlanta's so much. Atlanta's entire offensive system is about instinctive reads. They don't actually have a super complicated playbook, most of it is playground reads, just knowing where to be and how to play together.
Brooklyn is busting that up by having active hands. That's been helped by the fact that Jeff Teague has apparently lost the ability to dribble a basketball in this series: Teague had eight "lost the ball" turnovers last year according to Basketball Reference, in a 7-game series vs. Indiana. He has eight this year through four games vs. the Nets. He's on pace to shatter his career turnover rates for the playoffs. But a lot of it is how they've attacked passing lanes. Let me show you what I mean.
The Hawks' spacing has been bad throughout this series, but the fact that the Nets are constantly looking to intercept hasn't helped. Teague gets caught in the air here, there's no help down on him because Lopez is going to challenge him anyway. The only open man is up top and Teague can't make that read since it's right behind him. He can try the cross-court pass to Carroll in the corner, but he's got get through, again, active hands to get there.
Again, spacing is an issue, and this time, because the Nets are focused on disrupting Teague's line of sight, it helps others crowd the passing lanes, forcing him into one he misses There's no easy passes coming for the Hawks, a big change from the regular season.
Similar deal here, where the baseline cut usually opens up things for the kickout to the shooters. But the Nets are staying home and sniping those passing angles. There's just no good option here.
In that 2011 series, Manu Ginobili suffered an elbow injury just before the playoffs began and that seriously limited San Antonio's ability to make plays. (That summer they would trade with Indiana for a young forward out of San Diego State named Kawhi Leonard.) Paul Millsap suffered a shoulder strain that's seriously hampered him in this series, and Al Horford suffered a finger injury that has affected his shot.
To pull an upset you have to have a scheme, the personnel, and a little bit of fortune. The Nets have gotten all three, including the fact that the normally blistering Hawks shot 39.4 percent on shots with a defender more than six feet away according to NBA.com. This series, they're shooting just 35.6 percent on those open looks, and that number was even worse before Monday's game, which was lost on the defensive side of the ball.
That Grizzlies team was made of veterans who played big, played physical, and made big shots. These Nets look very similar, and not just because of their coach.
THE SPIRIT -- WARRIORS-MAVERICKS 2007: The most infamous first-round upset when the scrappy "We Believe" Warriors, lead by Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson, and Matt Barnes (along with, believe it or not, Andris Biedrins) took down the 67-win Dallas Mavericks. That Mavericks team gets a lot of criticism for its roster, but at the time, it was stacked. Jason Terry, All-Star forward Josh Howard, and a very functional roster of smart veterans surrounded prime Dirk Nowitzki who won MVP that season.
The Warriors beat Dallas because it was a matchup problem that only happens once in a blue moon in the NBA, because Dallas panicked in their overreaction to the Warriors' smallball, and because the Warriors had unstoppable momentum. Barclays Center will never get confused for Oracle Arena, but it did come alive in these two home wins, and the players fed off of it. That series featured shot making guards: Jarrett Jack and Deron Williams have come up big.
While that series was determined by the Warriors' smallball speed, this one is being dictated by the Nets grind-it-out size. Brook Lopez is a problem the Hawks have been unable to solve. They can't go at him in the post to draw fouls, he's too sound. He's disrupting their floaters off drive-and-kick cuts, forcing them to go high off glass. He's overpowering and shooting over them in the paint and on putbacks.
Golden State needed to shoot well in that series and get some crazy star performances vs. a sound team with a coach who lacked playoff experience in Avery Johnson. The Nets got a Deron Williams 35 point game straight out of Doc Brown's DeLorean and Mike Budenholzer has had no counter for the "short rolls" Brooklyn is using. (More on that from the excellent Mike Prada here.)
They have all the momentum, and the Hawks don't seem to have many answers for why they're playing this way. In short: they look out of sorts. And that's a really bad sign in what is now a three-game series.
This thing is in no way over, for either team, but more and more the sense is that Atlanta doesn't have that superstar performer to lean on. I thought in times of trouble, Paul Millsap, Jeff Teague, or Al Horford would step up for them and have a big game. They haven't. I thought Kyle Korver would be the rock to carry them. He hasn't been.
Now the series returns to Phillips Arena with there being every indication that these previous series aren't just pillars to measure this series against, they're warning signs on the way to an epic Hawks collapse.
