Tuesday's matchup between the Atlanta Hawks and the Orlando Magic held real stakes. While it was certainly upstaged nationally by matchups like Knicks-Celtics and Lakers-Thunder, the Southeast Division tilt was a pivot point in the race for the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference. For the Hawks, things were a bit more urgent than the Magic, simply due to the reality that Atlanta entered the tilt trailing Orlando by one game in the standings and facing potential tiebreaker concerns with a loss.
As such, the game served as something of a measuring stick for the Hawks and, through that lens, Atlanta was unable to live up to the billing. The Hawks trailed for the majority of the 48-minute matchup, ultimately falling by a final score of 119-112.
Entering the game, there were two clear areas of potential vulnerability for the Hawks from a statistical standpoint, with one on each side of the floor. On the defensive end, Atlanta entered the game with a bottom-five mark in free throw rate allowed since the All-Star break, and Orlando thrives in creating free throws, ranking in the top three of the league on both a rate and volume basis. On the offensive side, one of Atlanta's bugaboos this season has been ball security, and Orlando excels in creating havoc that leads to turnovers to juice an otherwise pedestrian offensive attack.
In this game, both glaring issues came to the forefront in familiar fashion. The Magic generated 31 free throw attempts, and the Hawks committed 18 turnovers that led directly to 20 points for Orlando.
The Hawks struggled in old, familiar ways against the Magic
"They do that, and they really put pressure on the rim," Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said when asked about Orlando creating 31 free throw attempts. "I thought earlier in the game we had some breakdowns early and they're a team that's hard to play from behind against because they are so deliberate offensively."
"I thought the second quarter, we had some possessions where we really defended well and we turned the ball over and they made us pay on those," Snyder continued. "Those are big swings. Because when we do guard and we have a chance to get out and maybe get something easy and the flip side is we turn it over and then give up something and now we're taking it out of the net."
All told, the Hawks allowed more than 1.22 points per possession to a Magic team that ranks in the bottom five of the NBA in offensive efficiency. Some of that can be traced to unsustainably hot 3-point shooting from Orlando (14-of-34 in the game), but Orlando also overwhelmed Atlanta with physicality. Not only did the Magic get to the line 31 times, but Orlando also secured more than 35 percent of its missed shots on the offensive glass.
Magic forward Paolo Banchero is a handful under the best circumstances, but the Hawks were forced to shift center Onyeka Okongwu into an unfamiliar role as the full-time primary defender against Banchero. That left Atlanta without a traditional rim protector on the backline and, while Okongwu did his job reasonably well, Banchero scored 30-plus points for the third straight time against Atlanta.
On the other end, Okongwu (30 points, 14 rebounds, four assists) and Trae Young (28 points, 10 assists) were strong for the Hawks, but the overall product was underwhelming. Atlanta clawed its way to league-average efficiency, scoring 1.15 points per possession in the game, but that was at least slightly juiced by nine points in the final 90 seconds of what amounted to garbage time. The Hawks lost the overall shooting battle, which is a dismal sign against Orlando in a vacuum, and not even a season-high 31 second-chance points could raise Atlanta's offensive baseline high enough in this game.
With the loss, the Hawks are now in rather dire straits when it comes to the division race and, by proxy, the race for the No. 7 spot. ESPN's BPI gives Atlanta only a 9.1 percent chance to win the Southeast after this result, even with two friendly matchups later this week before a rematch with Orlando in the regular season finale. More practically, the focus of the Hawks may be to avoid a dip to the 9-10 game, and Atlanta needs to take care of business against Brooklyn and Philadelphia on Thursday and Friday.
When it comes to Tuesday's game in Orlando, however, the Hawks were not able to generate a ton of positive mojo in a matchup that could recur one week later in the Play-In. Atlanta can take some solace in the likely regression to the mean of shooting variance, but the underlying issues remain as the Hawks navigate life without Jalen Johnson.