The Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks ended a home-and-home set in Atlanta on Halloween night with Miami securing the second win on the back-end of this series, 106-97. The Hawks, missing their star player, Trae Young, who is out with an ankle injury with plans to reevaluate the ankle on Monday, played a mostly solid game on Thursday, but they weren’t able to wrangle in the lead, and inexperience from the young Hawks team cost them a victory at home
Atlanta rookie Cam Reddish put the first Atlanta points on the board in every quarter except for the fourth. First, he dropped two from behind the stripe to start the game, then four minutes into the second quarter he hit the basket on a driving layup, and finally Reddish hit the first three-point basket of his NBA career a minute into the third quarter. He finished the game with nine points, six defensive rebounds, and four assists.
The first quarter looked hopeful for Atlanta, as they were keeping up with the Miami pace, playing better defense than they did Tuesday night, and taking better advantage of offensive rebounds, but the Hawks came up short 30-26 to end the first quarter. John Collins led the team in points in the first quarter with 12, and Bam Adebayo led the Heat.
The two teams played a pretty even game in the first half, as both the pace and point production were nearly equal, with Atlanta coming up just short in the second quarter. At halftime, Bam Adebayo had posted 11 points, seven rebounds, and four assists for Miami, and Deandre’ Bembry recorded 10 points and also posted seven rebounds and four assists for Atlanta. Rookie Kendrick Nunn also put up 10 points in the first half of the game.
The second half of the game played out much the same way the first did, for in the third quarter the Heat put up 33 points while the Hawks put up 28. In the fourth, there was only a one-point differential with Atlanta making one more shot than Miami. At one point, Miami was up by 18 points, but Atlanta managed to wrangle it down to six points with over five minutes left in the game, before ultimately losing by 10.
Nunn put up 19 of the 33 points in the third quarter for the Heat, and Bembry led the Hawks in point production in the third quarter as well, and Jabari Parker owned the fourth quarter scoring ten of the 22 points scored for Atlanta, and leading the team with 23 points, while Bembry put up 18 points in total for the Hawks.
Nunn led the Heat on Thursday with a career-high 28 points, while Herro put up 17 and Leonard put up 16 to help the Heat secure the win over the Hawks. Miami moves to 4-1 on the season while Atlanta falls to 2-3 with their star player out of commission right now.
Miami will face Houston on Sunday, Nov. 3 while the Hawks are off until Tuesday, Nov. 5, giving Young time to heal and the team time to regroup and focus on the future of the season, and not the past.
Final.
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— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) November 1, 2019
https://twitter.com/MiamiHEAT/status/1190101269291192320
