Since the All-Star break, the Hawks are locking down opponents, boasting the NBA's stingiest defense and riding a surge of winning momentum.
Since the All-Star break, no team in the NBA has been harder to score on than the Atlanta Hawks. That might be a surprising sentence to read about a franchise that spent most of the first half of the season searching for an identity, but the numbers don't leave much room for debate.
The Hawks have posted a 104.0 defensive rating since play resumed Feb. 19, trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder. Atlanta has held opponents to 110 or fewer points in five of their last seven games.
Hawks coach Quin Snyder saw it up close Wednesday night in Milwaukee, where the Atlanta blew out the Bucks 131-113 to extend their winning streak to five games and move above .500 at 32-31. The night didn't start cleanly — Atlanta surrendered 45 points in the first 14 minutes — but the group responded, holding Milwaukee to just 68 points over the final 34.
"I thought they played so well the first quarter and was really pleased, and guys deserved a lot of credit for raising their level," Snyder said. "Milwaukee came out not just shooting well — they were active, and they played. Both teams played really hard, so it's a really good win for us."
The second-half turnaround was aided by moving Dyson Daniels onto Giannis Antetokounmpo, a switch that let Atlanta pick him up higher on drives and gave the rest of the defense time to rotate. But the greater trend goes well beyond a single tactical adjustment against a single player.
Jock Landale, speaking before Wednesday's game, connected the defensive focus directly to everything else the Hawks have been able to do during the streak.
"I think that just our defensive pressure, cleaning up the glass, putting pressure on the offensive boards ourselves, really has trickled into the ball popping around and moving," he said. "And I think when our team plays in transition, runs hard, shares the ball, we're a tough team to beat. So that's kind of been the emphasis. And I think that we've all realized that."
For a team that has absorbed two major injuries to expected contributors and cycled through significant roster turnover over the last five months, arriving at that kind of collective clarity has not been straightforward. Landale acknowledged it took some honest internal conversations to get there.
"We've done a lot of sitting down and kind of looking at each other in the face and looking at each other in the mirror or whatever," he said. "And I think there was a realization of what works for us is starting to stick."
He was also asked about what the run actually means, given the competition level so far. The real test is still coming.
"We've done it against, you know, not the best competition," Landale said. "It'll be interesting to see if it sticks when we start playing the good teams."
With 19 games remaining and the Hawks holding a half-game lead over Charlotte for ninth in the Eastern Conference — two games behind Orlando and 2.5 games back from Miami — those games are arriving quickly. Atlanta has won six of seven since the break and tied their season-best win streak. Whether the defense travels into tougher matchups will go a long way in determining how deep into May this season extends.