Atlanta Hawks: Victories Against The West Are Key To Success
By Adam McGee
The Western Conference? More like the Wild West. For the last few years, fans and experts alike have spent considerable amounts of time discussing the strengths and imbalances between the NBA’s Eastern and Western conferences.
By record, the West has consistently shown itself to be far superior, but this season it seems like nobody told the Atlanta Hawks about it.
With a record of 22-8, the Hawks find themselves in second place in the East, and holding one of the better records in the league overall. Perhaps what’s most impressive about their record though, is how they’ve fared when playing out of conference.
The only two games that the Hawks have lost against the Western Conference came against the Spurs in San Antonio and the Lakers in Atlanta. Both games could have gone Atlanta’s way too, as the Spurs prevailed by a single point on a late game winner, while LA sealed their victory after Nick Young flopped on a three-point attempt.
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Aside from that, the Hawks have rattled off victories against some of the West’s elite teams. Last week, the Hawks defeated the Mavericks and Rockets on the road, as well as the Clippers at home in Atlanta, while earlier in the season, the Jazz, Pelicans and Nuggets have all fallen foul to Atlanta’s play too.
This is significant, as even against some of the conference’s lesser teams many of the East’s best can get unstuck when they face the other conference. Let’s take the Cleveland Cavaliers as a prime example.
Cleveland have gone 4-6 against the West, and have lost to all three of the supposed lesser Western teams that Atlanta has beaten, Utah, New Orleans and Denver.
At 7-5 against the West, the Chicago Bulls haven’t had it all their own way either. The Bulls have picked up big wins against the likes of Memphis and Portland, but have also dropped games against Sacramento and Denver. This just highlights how almost every team in the West is capable of causing problems on any given night.
Luckily for the Hawks, at the moment it seems like they’ve let less games slip against the opposite conference’s mediocre teams than many of their competitors have though. If the Hawks want to keep pressing for the top seed in the East they’re going to have to maintain that sort of form too.
The next month will see the Hawks face the Trail Blazers, Grizzlies, and Thunder, as well as a re-match with the Clippers. As important as these games are, and as significant as victories in any of them could be, they’re not necessarily going to break their season.
Sure, victories against those four teams could make Atlanta’s season, and would have them positioned as a genuine contender approaching the All-Star break, but it’s still the smaller banana skins that they need to be most careful of.
Losing to Portland wouldn’t necessarily see Atlanta lose ground, as the Blazers are going to beat more teams than not around the league, but slips against the likes of Utah and Minnesota could be very costly.
As the schedule gets tougher for Atlanta, of course they will continue to look to steal some wins from the powerhouse forces of the Western conference, but what’s perhaps more important is that they take care of business in the games they’re expected to win.
Many of their rivals are currently struggling to do so, and as a result, it could help push Atlanta over the edge when it comes to playoff seeding.