Season a washout for crushed Hawks

ATLANTA — The Atlanta Hawks fought hard just to make the playoffs.

They battled to the very last second against the top-seeded team in the East.

But in the end, there’s only one word to describe this season. Disappointing. Coming off a surprising run to the Eastern Conference final in the summer of 2021, the Hawks entered this season thinking of themselves as a potential championship contender.

Instead, they took a big step backward, spending much of the year under .500 before a late surge got them into the play-in tournament with the ninth-best record in the conference.

The Hawks won two straight in the tournament — including a road victory at Cleveland — to take the No. 8 playoff seed, but they were no match for the Miami Heat in the opening round of the playoffs.

Atlanta lasted only five games, finished off by a 97-94 defeat Tuesday night.

It really wasn’t a surprising result, given the Hawks lack of consistency during the regular season.

There were some obvious culprits — a rash of injuries, not to mention a covid-19 outbreak that forced the team to essentially rely on a G-League roster just to take the court — but there were also mysterious lapses in effort that no one could put a finger on.

“We have to play better during the regular season to put ourselves in a better ranking, a better position to approach the playoffs,” Danilo Gallinari said. “We let a lot of games go. We had too many ups and down during the season. When it’s playoff time, you can’t take games off, minutes off. You’ve got to play every game the same way.”

From a summer filled with hope, the Hawks head into an offseason that looks much more tumultuous.

“It was a tough season. This was not a good result,” Gallinari said. “Where do we go from here? I have no idea.”