Byline: Steve Aschburner; Staff Writer
Atlanta, Ga. -- ATLANTA 97, WOLVES 89
The mood in the Timberwolves' locker room late Wednesday night seemed to be we had one coming, so we'll play along and find reasons why a 97-89 loss to the Atlanta Hawks might be understandable, maybe even acceptable:
- The Wolves had flown into Atlanta late, touching down at about 3 a.m. Eastern time, heads hitting pillows an hour or so after that. The Hawks, by contrast, were fresher than fresh: Off Tuesday and playing at home for the 10th time in their past 11 games.
- Several other teams had ventured into the library-like confines of Philips Arena and gotten nailed with the equivalent of hefty overdue fines (don't believe that official attendance figure).
The Spurs scored only 77 points and lost three weeks ago, the Bucks scored 83 and lost last week. Remarkably, Atlanta's record against teams .500 or better is 12-16; it is 4-18 against everybody else.
- The Hawks played harder, were quicker to the ball in the open court and off the glass, and worked defensively all game, thereby earning the victory. As Wolves guard Sam Cassell said: 'This is something unusual for our ballclub, for a team to play harder than us. But they played harder than us and they deserved to win.'
Then again, as Clint Eastwood's character says in 'Unforgiven,' deserves got nothing to do with it, kid. These were the Atlanta Hawks, a franchise that ought to be on Bud Selig's dartboard for contraction, a club whose proudest marketing boast is the lack of waiting time at its concessions stands.
Yes, bad teams occasionally beat good teams in the NBA, especially when the latter is on the road, wrapping up a back-to-back. But rarely does that happen when the better team is ahead by seven points, with seven minutes left.
That's the position the Wolves were in, up 83-76 at the end of a 17-6 run across the third and fourth quarters. All seemed well. Then it unraveled.
Said coach Flip Saunders: 'I told my guys, `No matter how tired you are, when we get in that situation, that's our bread and butter, our ability to execute down the stretch, and we didn't do it.' '
'Any time you let a team hang around,' guard Fred Hoiberg said, 'anything can happen. We got a seven-point lead and we got complacent.'
The swoon started innocently enough, with Kevin Garnett blocking a shot by Shareef Abdur-Rahim but with Cassell throwing the ball away on the fast break. Jason Terry nailed a three-pointer going the other way and, in less than five minutes, the Hawks had blown by Minnesota with a 14-3 spurt, leading 90-87 with 2:29 left.
The Wolves' three-headed monster was relatively toothless - 17-for-53, 50 points (14.5 below average) - and as they fired a few more misses, Abdur-Rahim threw down a fast-break dunk and Terry drained the backbreaker from the arc with 48.5 seconds left.
Considering Atlanta's struggles this season, this sure seemed like one the Wolves frittered away.
Garnett disagreed, vehemently. 'Nobody is toying with nobody, man. Every team in the league is good,' he said. 'Don't start putting that out that we're lollygagging. It's hard to play in the league, it's hard to be consistent. For the longest time we've been consistent... . They play really, really good at home. They put some runs together and they won the game.'
Said Saunders: 'They're no question, we made some mental mistakes and we played tired down the stretch.'
Said Cassell: 'We understand how we lost this game, why we lost this game. So it's not a big concern to us. We just got to increase our intensity and work on our execution down the stretch, and we'll be fine.
'We did so many things not to win the game.'
Steve Aschburner is at saschburner@startribune.com.
GAME RECAP
MVP
Shareef Abdur-Rahim kept the heat on Kevin Garnett, scoring 32 points and grabbing 14 rebounds with five assists in 44 minutes. Abdur-Rahim was perfect from the line (10-for-10) and scored at least 30 points for the fifth time this season.
The stat
- 50: Months since Atlanta had beat the Wolves, dating to December 1999 over eight consecutive Hawks defeats.
- 23: The Wolves' three-headed monster (Garnett, Sprewell, Cassell) got outscored 73-50 by Atlanta's Big Three (for a night) of Abdur-Rahim, Jason Terry and Stephen Jackson.
- 35: Minnesota's bench came within one point of its season scoring high (36 points at Boston Dec. 15) but squandered it, slipping to 22-6 when the reserves score 20 or more.
The streak goes on
Sam Cassell made all nine of his free throws, pushing into the NBA's all-time top 10 in terms of consecutive free throws made. Cassell is at 65, in seventh place overall, after passing Rick Barry (60), Terrell Brandon (61), Joe Dumars (62) and Dan Issel (63) Wednesday. The record of 97 was set by former Wolves guard Micheal Williams in 1993.
