Revamped Hawks end Cavs’ perfect start
THE Atlanta Hawks handed Cleveland their first loss on Tuesday with a 110106 win, breaking a series stranglehold that saw the Cavaliers sweep Atlanta out of the playoffs the last two years.
The Hawks’ victory snapped an 11-game losing skid to Cleveland, who dropped to 6-1 on the season as they were the NBA’s last unbeaten team.
“We were tired of getting pushed around by Cleveland and we wanted to beat these guys,” said Hawks centre Dwight Howard.
This is a much different Hawks team than the one that had been dominated by the Cavaliers and Howard is one of the reasons why.
The addition of Howard to the lineup is part of the roster shake-up that coach Mike Budenholzer had hoped would allow them to compete with the Cavaliers.
“They’ve dominated the Eastern Conference for a long time now,” Hawks forward Kent Bazemore said. “They’re definitely the measuring stick, and we passed our first test.
“This is one of t he biggest wins I’ve had since I’ve been een here. They’re a ver y, ver y specia al l team and for my t wo years here, t hey’ve k icked our butts.”
Cleveland sweptpt the Hawks in the conference semifinals mifinals l ast spring when they hey set three-point shooting oting records and won each game by an average of 12. 5 points.
The Cavaliers swept all seven m e e t i n g s between t he two last season, including the postseason.
Howa rd f i n i s hed with 17 rebounds for A t l a n t a d e s p i t e hav ing to leave t he g a me br i e f l y i n the first quarter to get s t i t c he d up p af ter a cut to t he lip. “We are tired of what people said about us in the pa past and we wanted to chan change that,” Howard said. ““We are going to grow as a team. Our chemistry gets better with every game.” Dennis Schroder (pictured, AFP) scored a career-high 28 p o i n t s , Ba z e - more added 25 and Paul Millsap tallied 21 for the Hawks in front of a crowd of 20,500 a at Quicken Loans ar arena in Cleveland. Ba Bazemore made a couple o of clutch baskets in the fin final four minutes. His th three-pointer with 3:33 le left extended the Hawks’Hawks lead to 101-95.
He followed with a baseline jumper in the final seconds to put the game out of reach after a three-point play from Kevin Love had pulled Cleveland within 108-106 with 25 seconds left.
Kyrie Irving scored 29 points, LeBron James had 23 points, nine rebounds and five assists and Love added 24 points and 12 rebounds for Cleveland, who missed 31 three-point attempts.
In Memphis, Marc Gasol hit a short shot as time expired to lift the Memphis Grizzlies past the Denver Nuggets 108-107.
Emmanuel Mudiay, who scored a game-high 23 points, put the Nuggets on top with eight seconds left.
Trailing 106-105, Denver trapped Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley on an inbounds play.
Gary Harris stole the ball and passed to Mudiay, who finished with a dunk.
The teams then exchanged turnovers in the final seconds. Vince Carter lobbed the ball from the baseline on the inbounds play to Gasol for the winning shot.