Playing on consecutive nights, the Hawks couldn’t keep up with the fresh legs from the Bulls in the second half and quickly found their 18-point lead snuffed out. With a 125-113 loss, they dropped their second straight game to fall 4-7.
“That’s what teams do,” Hawks guard Trae Young said. “We all know, whenever the other team’s coming off a back-to-back, and you want to get up and down and kind of continue to make them tired. So, that’s not an excuse to let them play the way they did in the second half or in the fourth quarter. But yeah, that’s what happened.”
Here are five observations:
1. The Hawks needed every ounce of scoring from Young on Friday night in a loss to the Pistons, but on Saturday he gave them a boost with his playmaking. The Bulls picked up Young at full court, sometimes trapping him and forcing him to find others to get points on the board.
Young had six assists in his first six minutes of play and had 10 assists by the end of the first half. He only had eight points in the first 24 minutes of Saturday’s game and did not score his 10th point of the night until 54 seconds remained in the third quarter.
He impacted the game on the defensive end early, holding Coby White to 0-of-3 shooting early. But Young scored 14 points and dished 16 assists in 38 minutes. It’s the fifth time in seven games that Young has played 35 or minutes because the Hawks have limited options to run the offense when he goes to the bench.
2. The Hawks have had to navigate multiple injuries during their first 11 games, which came in 17 days. They had nine games in the last 14 days, which included three sets of back-to-back games. The early portion of the season has been unkind to the Hawks as they’ve tried to battle through heavy legs, on top of the limited rotation.
The heaviness popped up midway in the fourth quarter, as the Bulls went on a nearly 10-minute, 27-9 run that erased an 18-point Hawks lead. Young and Jalen Johnson missed a pair of back-to-back 3s with 5:56 to play in the game.
They missed eight of 30 free throws and scored just 15 points in the fourth.
“That’s all you can do, is push through it,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said. “Think emotional loss last night, and then we were playing really well. They subbed the beginning of the third quarter and got downhill in transition. They were aggressive and we spotted them some points on our defensive glass, and we gave up some stuff in transition.”
3. For the second straight game, Hawks guard Dyson Daniels had five or more steals, as he continues to give the team a spark on the defensive end. When the Hawks acquired Daniels in June, they looked to add the young but elite defender to the rotation.
He had six steals on Saturday night to follow up his career-high seven the night before in Detroit.
The Hawks also looked to develop his offensive tools and he has looked to attack the rim more while looking to improve his shooting from deep. Daniels has scored double-digit points in six of the nine games he played this season, including Saturday when he scored 18 points.
4. Like the rest of the team, the fatigue caught up to Clint Capela. The Hawks center strung together one of his best nights so far this season, scoring 16 points by the end of the first half. But he only scored four points in the second half after the Bulls strategically subbed players out early, inserting fresher legs throughout the remainder of the game.
5. With all the injuries, the Hawks have not been able to generate as much offense when Young goes to the bench. The Hawks were a minus-six in the 38 minutes Young played and minus-six in the 10 minutes he sat on the bench.
Though they’ve had some solid games from the bench, the Hawks’ second-unit has gotten outworked in four of their last five games. On Saturday, they were outscored 48-26.
Stat to know
16 -- Dyson Daniels has 16 steals over his last three games, becoming the first Hawks player since Mookie Blaylock (18 in 1997) to do so.
Quotable
“They just started running after we were missing shots today. They were just running. That lineup was way, way more faster and way more aggressive on the drives. And it hurt us. It really hurt us.” -- Clint Capela on the Bulls’ early subs in the third quarter.
Up next
The Hawks travel to Boston for the first game of the first round of the NBA Cup on Tuesday at TD Garden.
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