The Hawks looked to keep rolling in Houston, but it wouldn’t be easy in this toughest matchup of the winning streak.
Both teams were clicking on offense early on, with the Rockets capitalizing on paint touches to the turn of 14 points in the paint in just the first six minutes of the game. The Hawks countered with hot three-point shooting, hitting four of their first seven from deep.
Houston began to pull away a tad behind 10 early points from Jabari Smith Jr. The Hawks faced a 32-24 deficit before Zaccharie Risacher hit this corner catch-and-shoot three:
After one quarter (and one phantom foul call), the Rockets led 35-27.
The second quarter was more of the same, with the Hawks unable to slow down the Rockets offense — although you can’t plan for them canning this number of deep threes. Atlanta hung tough and didn’t let the game get out of hand, however.
Atlanta put together an 10-0 run to pull to within five points when the game was teetering for them. Two-way efforts like in the below video helped spark the run:
Halftime mercifully arrived, and after trailing by as many as 15 points, the Hawks walked into the locker room down 62-54.
The Rockets came out the hungrier bunch after halftime, quickly pushing the lead back up to 15 points.
And then the floodgates opened. The Hawks couldn’t buy a bucket or a call, and the lead kept escalating.
At the end of the third quarter, it was 101-76 bad guys.
And that was all she wrote. No fourth quarter comeback. Winning streak over.
Nickeil Alexander-Walker led the team in scoring with 21 points on 6-for-12 (50%) shooting.
The team will have a quick turnaround as they head back to the crib for a matchup with the Golden State Warriors at State Farm Arena tomorrow night.
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