Hovering Hawks finding consistency since return from All-Star break

The Hawks have won six of the seven games played since the return from the break. They’ve tied their season-best win streak, winning five consecutive games after a victory against the Bucks on Wednesday.

“Just being connected on the same page,” Hawks center Jock Landale said Tuesday before the team’s game against the Bucks. “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, and I think there was a realization of what works for us is starting to stick.”

The Hawks have had one of the best defenses in the NBA since play resumed on Feb. 19. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Hawks have allowed opponents to score 103.6 points per 100 possessions, the best in the NBA.

They currently rank third in the NBA in defensive efficiency behind the Spurs and the Thunder. In their last seven games, the Hawks have held their opponents to 110 or fewer points in five of them.

“We’ve done it against, you know, not the best competition,” Landale said. “I never want to say anyone’s bad, because every team’s good (in the NBA), but it’ll be interesting to see if it sticks when we start playing the good teams.

“But I think that just our defensive pressure, cleaning up the glass, putting pressure on the (offensive) boards ourselves, really has trickled into the ball kind of popping around and moving. 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.”

In Wednesday’s win over the Bucks, the Hawks’ defensive pressure didn’t come through until the second quarter. But it arrived just in time for them to come back from a 16-point deficit. Then they really locked down in the second half.

The Hawks gave up 45 points in the first 14 minutes of game time. They would allow the Bucks to score 68 points in the remaining 34 minutes.

Part of that came down to the Hawks switching to guard Dyson Daniels as the primary defender on Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. It allowed the Hawks to pick up Antetokounmpo higher, giving them time to slow him down on drives to the basket.

“It’s hard to come up with the superlatives for him defensively,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said of Daniels after the game. “The fact that he can guard across different positions. And you’re not going to stop Giannis, but you can, as we said, try to make it hard.

“I thought they played so well the first quarter and was really pleased, and guys deserved a lot of credit for raising their level. 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.”