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The Atlanta Hawks four-game winning streak is over.
A tough first quarter and too many mistakes in the fourth gave the Hawks their first loss since Halloween in New Orleans, and now they are 7-5 heading into Friday's matchup against the Chicago Bulls.
So who were the standouts from last night's loss to Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers?
The Hawks had four starters finish with a positive plus/minus last night and one player who did not due to playing a lot of minutes with the Hawks bench, which was abysmal (more on them later).
Jalen Johnson: +5 in 38 minutes
Dyson Daniels: +9 in 30 minutes
Onyeka Okongwu: +9 in nearly 30 minutes
Kingston Flemings: +3 in 23 minutes
Nickeil Alexander-Walker: -14 in 34 minutes
The Hawks lost this game by double-digits, but it was not the fault of the starting lineup. This has been a really good unit and they were very competitive against the top team in the Western Conference.
It was a really rough night to be a member of the Hawks bench.
While CJ McCollum (21 points) an Aaron Wiggins (15 points) played and shot the ball well, they did not get a lot of help and their numbers suffered because of it.
I broke down how the plus/minus worked out for the starting group. Here is how the bench looked:
CJ McCollum: -13 in 24 minutes
Aaron Wiggins: -11 in 22 minutes
Lu Dort: -19 in 18 minutes
Jock Landale: -9 in 14 minutes
Zuby Ejiofor: -10 in nearly four minutes
McCollum and Wiggins had least made some sort of impact, but it was a dreadful night for Dort, Landale, and Ejiofor, who only played a short stint in the first half and did not return.
Dort is a very streaky player on offense when it comes to shooting the basketball and last night is what it looks like when he is down. Two games ago, Dort scored 25 points and hit five three point attempts, but last night he was just 1-for-6.
The bench has not been this bad every night, but it was a big reason why they lost.
I hope that Hawks fans can appreciate what Daniels brings every night on the court. The reason that it is easy, for me at least, to not harp on Daniels three-point shooting is because of the impact that he has on other spots on the court. Daniels finished last night's game with 10 points, eight assits, six rebounds, and four steals. He was very good when he was on the court for Atlanta and he is arguably the most important player every night for his versatility on both ends of the court.
Whenever the Hawks would claw back into the game, they had an untimely turnover that flipped the momentum in the Lakers direction
Los Angeles scored 29 points off 19 Hawks turnovers and coming into the game, Atlanta was one of the better teams in the NBA when it came to take care of the ball. They could not against the Lakers and it cost them.