Another team finds a defeat at the hands of the Hawks to be amongst their worst of the season!

Much like the Clippers loss to the ATL helped doom them to a playoff-less fate, so too did the Sacramento Kings find themselves humiliated by our birds of prey, at least according to the Kings blog Sactown Royalty.

The blog rates their offensive performance in the Hawks 99-76 pasting of the Kings at Philips on March 18 as the team's second worst performance on the season.

By the way, I know we don't have a ton to brag about from this past season, but let the record show that we swept the Warriors, the team that may take down the #1 seed Mavericks tonight, in 2006-07.

Everyone who played contributed last night. Zaza Pachulia had 18 points at halftime on his way to 23 on 11-12 shooting. Marvin Williams had nearly a double-double in the first half, finishing with a full one (13 points, 11 rebounds).

And then there was Josh Smith. A short aside first.

Last night, about one minute into the game, ace Hawks PR man Jason Roose came over to my station on press row to ask if I was live-blogging the game. I wasn't, but FYI, I will be live-bloggin Wednesday night for the Miami game (plug!). I asked him why, and he said he wanted it on the record that Josh Smith was going to get his first triple-double tonight. Obviously, you will have to take me at my word on this one, but the game literally was less than 90 seconds old when he made this proclamation. Man was he close to being right.

Josh ended up a point shy of turning Roose into a modern-day Nostradamus (Smoove finished with 9 points, 12 rebounds, and 10 assists), but the fact that he came that close is just another testament to the all-around player Smith is on his way to becoming.

Just to recap, in the last week, Josh has now set career-bests in points (32 against Minnesota), rebounds (17 vs Philly), and assists (10 against Sacto). He is starting to remind me of myself, actually. And by that I mean, when I used to rock Tecmo NBA Basketball on my old-school Nintendo, I used to play with the Bulls and see how many different things I could do with Michael Jordan, like how many steals he could get, or points he could score, etc.

The way Josh is playing right now, it's almost like he is thinking to himself, "Let's see, what statistical category do I want to fill up tonight?" Meanwhile, the Hawks have won five of seven since losing Joe Johnson. Cause that makes sense.

By the way, the picture to the right is from a dunk Smith nearly pulled off last night that, had he finished it, would have probably been the best dunk these eyes had ever seen. Here is a link below to see for yourself. He missed it, but man if he had nailed it...wow.

Josh Childress, lest we forget his efforts, also had a great night as well, popping for a season-high 25 points. He was particularly present in the third period, hitting 6-6 from the field and earning himself the lead in Rob Blackstien's fantasy hoops column for USA Today.

With the Heat coming to town Wednesday night, it will be important for the Hawks to play team ball the way they did against the Kings (they dished out a season-high 32 assists). They can win this game without Joe. Man, who thought we would be able to say that two weeks ago.

As we begin play this evening, the Hawks are five games out of the 8th spot in the East. With only 15 games left, that's a pretty huge margin. Still, it would be nice to at least put some pressure on the teams in front of us.

Sacramento is a beatable team, but not one we can just show up and expect to dominate (not that such a team exists in the NBA). They beat us in Sacto earlier this season when we were without JJ and Josh Childress among others. We are without Joe now as well, of course, but there are still positive memories of last week's four-game home winning streak.

In breaking down tonight's game today with Hawks assistant David Fizdale, he said the Kings will be daring us to beat them from outside. That being the case, I look for big performances from Marvin Williams and Salim Stoudamire, our two best perimeter threats in Joe's absence.

I am interested to see the match-up between the Kings' Kevin Martin and Josh Childress, mostly because each of them manages to shoot well from the field despite two of the most unconventional (read: ugly) releases in the NBA.

In other news, we have posted a survey on the Hawks site to get your feedback on how we do on this here Internet thing. Please take a few minutes and fill it out - you can win four tickets to the game against the Bulls on April 1 (and no, that's not a cruel April Fool's joke). Seriously, we strive to give you the things you want over here at Hawks.com, so any information you can give us about your preferences will help to make the site get better and better.

Finally, just a reminder - if you can't make the game tonight due to any legitimate reason (birth of your first child, let's say), remember you can check it out in HD tonight, one of three Hawks games being shown in high-def over the course of these few weeks. It should be pretty sweet. Otherwise, get down to Philips and let's see if the Hawks can't get a season-high fifth straight home win!

See you there!