Five Reasons The Atlanta Hawks Shouldn’t Lose Hope

May 20, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Hawks forward DeMarre Carroll (5) reacts after a basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers during the second quarter of game one of the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Philips Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
May 20, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Hawks forward DeMarre Carroll (5) reacts after a basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers during the second quarter of game one of the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Philips Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports /
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May 20, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Hawks forward DeMarre Carroll (5) reacts after a basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers during the second quarter of game one of the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Philips Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
May 20, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Atlanta Hawks forward DeMarre Carroll (5) reacts after a basket against the Cleveland Cavaliers during the second quarter of game one of the Eastern Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Philips Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports /

The Atlanta Hawks suffered two different kinds of losses in their Wednesday loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The team lost to Cleveland 97-89 and fell to 0-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals. That wasn’t the worst thing to happen that night, unfortunately. The team also lost their most valuable player thus far in the playoffs, DeMarre Carroll.

Although as of this writing (late Wednesday night) Carroll has only been diagnosed with a knee sprain, he has yet to have an MRI and will most likely miss significant time.

That means that the two defenders best suited to handle LeBron James–Carroll and Thabo Sefolosha, who is out for the season with a broken leg after a seemingly-unprovoked altercation with the New York City Police Department–are both probably unavailable for the rest of this series.

So things don’t exactly seem very hopeful. But as easy as it is to give up and write this off as a great season that ended a little too early, the Atlanta Hawks still have a lot of reasons to be hopeful about this series! Well maybe not a lot, but at least five. I’ve managed to come up with five reasons the Hawks (and Atlanta’s True Believers) shouldn’t lose hope just yet.

If you Hawks fans out there have more, please feel free to send them to me either on Twitter or as a comment on this post. I’ll tweet out the best ones I get from you guys. Anyway, enough shameless self-promotion, let’s get to the hopefulness.

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