Josh Smith leads the way with 23 points, 9 rebounds and seven assists to help the Atlanta Hawks defeat Dallas Mavericks 106-89: Atlanta earn home court advantage in the first round series against the Boston Celtics …….
On Thursday night at the Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA, the capacity crowd of 14595 witnessed their team Atlanta Hawks give a thrashing to the reigning NBA Champions, the Dallas Mavericks with a score line of 106-89.
The home side had much to play for in the season finale and their players answered that call with sizable contributions. Atlanta had six players scoring in double digits while shooting the ball 52.9% from the field.
Jeff Teague contributed 17 points; Joe Johnson had 15 while Kirk Hinrich notched up 12 points. The bench scoring was led by Willie Green who managed 11 points while Ivan Johnson contributed 10 points.
For the Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki led the way with 22 points, Rodrigue Beaubois 13 points while Jason Terry came off the bench to record 11 points to his name. However the rest of the Mavericks roster was unimpressive on the night
as none of the other players managed to get more than 7 points individually.
Both sides were evenly matched up in the rebounding department, Atlanta grabbing 41, compared to Mavs 40. However, the home side made the most of their opportunities from inside the paint, outscoring Dallas 50-38 in that aspect.
Atlanta came out of the blocks running, quickly managing their way to a 17-6 advantage courtesy of a Smith jump shot at the 6:55 mark. After the next minute, Hawks were leading 22-11 and from that point on, they went on a 9-0 run
to quickly prolong their advantage into double figures, 31-11.
The offensive dominance continued for the Hawks as they opened up a 21 point advantage with 44.3 seconds remaining in the opening period. However, by the end of the quarter, the scores were 38-21.
Inside the first four minutes of the second quarter, Hawks were able to get their advantage back above 20 and never looked fazed at any point of the game. Atlanta`s lead remained above that figure of 20 for the remaining part of
the half but with Dallas scoring 4 points in the closing seconds, the score was 44-60.
The highlight for the Mavs side came in the third quarter as they were able to put up 28 points in that frame. However their inability to stop the Hawks offence, which still managed to put up 26 points in the quarter. After three
quarters of game time had been played, the scores were 86-72 in Hawks favour.
In the final quarter of the match, Hawks got back to being their assertive self and stayed on track to continue to dominate the visitors in the season finale. By the 3:59 mark in the quarter, Hawks had achieved their highest lead
on the night of 26 points.
Mavs did manage to pick up the slack in the closing stages to cut the lead to 17; however they lacked that spirited mentality in order for them to be able to win this game.
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