The numbers don’t lie…

Now that the Hawks-Bulls series went down just like it was predicted here, let’s take a look at exactly what went wrong for Atlanta after heading to Game 5 tied 2-2. The issues that have been brought up on TV, radio, blogs, etc usually involved Josh Smith’s shot selection, Al Horford’s poor shooting, failure to rebound, and poor perimeter defense.

But, I think there is a stat that most are overlooking…Josh shot 13-29 in Games 5/6, which isn’t terrible. Al did struggle, shooting 8-23 and missing many open looks. The rebounding margin was in the Bulls favor for these 2 games, but only 72-68. D-Rose shot 50% (19-38) and played well, but that was expected.

Atlanta needed to score to beat Chicago, and they failed to do so. Part of it was Josh Smith’s shot selection, part was Horford’s poor shooting, but most of all it was the inability to knock down long-range jumpers. Chicago plays really good defense from 15 feet in, but the Hawks were able to get many good looks from 3 point range. They just couldn’t make any of them…

Here is the 3 point shot breakdown for the series.

Game 1 (ATL win) - 7/13 (53.8%)
Game 2 (ATL loss) – 3/13 (23.1%)
Game 3 (ATL loss) – 1/6 (16.7%)
Game 4 (ATL win) – 4/11 (36.4%)
Game 5 (ATL loss) – 1/12 (8.3%)
Game 6 (ATL loss) – 1/11 (9.1%)

So, for the series, in the 2 Hawks wins they were 11/24 from 3 (45.8%). In the 4 losses, the team shot 6/42 (14.2%).

Although unlikely, just to give some perspective on these numbers, if the Hawks had made the same percentage of 3’s in the 4 losses as they did in their 2 wins, that would equal to 13 more made 3 pointers, or 39 points. They lost Games 5/6 by a combined 32 points…