Tonight Starts Important Stretch For Hawks
Posted by:
Micah Hart on
January 3, 2008 at
2:26AM AFT
If you will pardon me for saying this yet another time, I find the Hawks at a particularly important section of the season's schedule at present.
In my opinion, the upcoming 7-game stretch is hugely important to the Hawks, and will go a long ways towards determining the team's playoff fate.
It was no surprise the Hawks started their current 3-game road trip with a loss at Dallas. The Mavs were out to break a two-game skid, plus get revenge for the loss at Philips Arena on opening night. A totally understandable defeat.
The next two games though, tonight at Cleveland and Friday at Indiana, are both winnable. Neither of those squads are playing particularly great basketball, but both have the talent to beat Atlanta if they come out sluggish like they did against the Mavs.
At the end of the trip, the Hawks then return home for 5 straight home games against, in order, the Nets, the Cavs, the Wizards, the Bulls, and the Nuggets. Currently the Hawks have a better record than 4 of those teams, and are only 2 games worse than Denver.
Right now Atlanta is 15-13, and is sitting in the 4 spot in the East, just percentage points ahead of Toronto.
If they can go, say, 5-2 in the next 7, which is absolutely reasonable, they could find themselves with some nice padding in a conference that only has six winning teams at present.
It is important the team does well in this next stretch, because after that it gets much harder. Following the home game against Denver on Jan. 15th, the Hawks then go to Milwaukee for the second end of a back-to-back, the start of 7 of the next 8 on the road, including the team's first trip out to the West Coast.
Big road trips are tough on any team, which makes these next several games all the more important to build some momentum going into it.
NBA players and coaches always talk about taking the season in little chunks, and in this particular case, this chunk is a must have for this aspiring playoff team.
20-15. That's what I'm shooting for on the morning of January 16th.
Let's hope the Hawks get a head start towards that with a good performance tonight against LeBron and company in Cleveland.
Game time is 7:00 ET, and FSN is the channel.
