Hawks get the win in a historical comeback

Game 5

Hawks: 109

76ers: 106

Absolute roller coaster of emotions in this one.

But before I get into my highly anticipated opinions and analysis of last nights game, I need to give a little side story of my experience watching it.

For the third time this postseason, I’ve been at work while the Hawks have been playing. Which really is tragic for me because I work at a gym where there’s TV’s everywhere and I hear people talking about the games all the time. I always make sure to record the games because I refuse to just look at the score on my phone. If the Hawks are playing in the playoffs, I need to be watching it getting the full experience and becoming way too invested in the game. So yeah, Im at work not looking at my phone, trying not to look at the TV’s, and literally closing my ears every time I see someone who looks like they might be talking about basketball.

I got off at 9:30, but literally 10 minutes before I close everything up and finally go home, I hear one of the most obnoxiously loud and high pitched groans from what I thought to be a 10 year old girl. I thought there was an emergency so I turn all of my attention to the commotion coming from the corner of the LifeCafe. Then, to my surprise, I realize that the source of this squeal was from a man, probably about the age of 40, staring aggressively at his phone.

“Everything okay?” I ask, in my manager voice.

“Nahhh man, the Hawks are down by 20 “ :(

Words were not available in my head.

…. Without saying a word, I turn around, put my head down, walk to the back office, and melt into the rolling chair in defeat.

It wasn’t the fact that we were down by 20 that made me so upset. It was the fact that now I’m going to watch the game knowing that there’s gonna come a point that we’re down by 20. So if we were gonna be up 5 at halftime, I still couldn’t get excited because I knew we were gonna be down by 20 at some point.

I decided not to watch the game last night due to the fact that I had to get sleep because I have another 9 hour shift today. (In fact, I’m writing this at work.) So I went home last night, no phone, no TV, showered, and straight to bed.

Fast forward to this morning at 4:30 A.M.

I’m not a morning person, so I already wasn’t in a good mood and I would love to watch the game and enjoy it but I knew we were gonna be down by 20 points sooner or later. I had to watch the game though, I couldn’t not watch it. I figured maybe we would just have a rough start and then figure our it out after the first quarter like we did in game 4, and get back into it relatively quick. So I pushed through and continued to watch. I was right about us going down quickly, but not so much about figuring it out after the first quarter…

okay, that’s the backstory. thanks for listening to that important message.

How bout that game though.

The Hawks are doing it time and time again: Looking absolutely awful, giving the opposing crowd all of the momentum in the world, and then coming back and making stars turn into dust. It really did look bad for a while. Joel Embid was the second coming of Jesus Christ for the majority of the game. Our boy Bogie couldn’t get going and then fouled out at the beginning of the fourth. Steph Curry’s brother couldn’t miss. It was pretty bad, I’m not gonna lie.

But this Hawks team is just different. If it was any other team trailing by 24 with 4 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, they would be preparing for the game 6 elimination game. Not us though. Nobody backed down and these young guys just kept fighting.

Trae Young is solidifying himself as a star in this league and I couldn’t be happier about it. He’s pretty quickly making enemies with new cities and I think this is just the beginning for him. So he obviously did great, but the person I’m most happy to see playing exceptionally well is John Collins. You can see it when they’re down, that he is the guy making sure to dap everyone up and keep everyone focused and determined to keep going. His leadership in games like last night will help him go a long way in this league.

For anyone who didn’t watch the game last night: The Hawks came back from a 27 point deficit and won the game. Absolute madness. It sounds crazy, but it wasn’t even a nail biter. We didn’t even let Philly get a chance for the last shot. We got in front with a minute left and didn’t blow it by letting up on defense. Everyone is talking about how “The 76ers blew a 27 point lead” but what I think the headline should be is “The Hawks came back from 27 to win”. It was us that won the game, not Philly that lost. We’ve proven that we can win games without any help. We shut Embid down yet again in the 2nd half and started making our shots. Those two things are all we need to be able to win this series. Prevent Joel Embid from getting to the basket, and keep shooting the ball with confidence.

So that’s two games in a row that we’ve stormed back to win in dramatic fashion. Now we have another day off and then we’re back in Atlanta with a chance to end the series at home in 6. Pretty wild that it’s come this far, but here we are and I have full confidence in our guys that we can finish this series without having to face elimination. What the Hawks are doing is remarkable and if we can win just one more game then we’ll be in the Eastern Conference finals. And if that happens, I wouldn’t bet against them no matter who they’re playing.

Before we get there though, we gotta focus on this next game. Friday is about to be the longest day of my life….I wouldn’t want it any other way though.

How bout we start playing just a litttleeee bit earlier this time ah? Maybe don’t wait till the fourth quarter and give me a heart attack before y’all decide to remember how to play basketball.

Also, this actually wasn’t the first game I’ve had to watch at 4:30 am. I watched game 4 at 4:30, when we came back from 18. And I watched game 3 of the Knicks series at the crack of dawn. We won that game by 16. Who knows, these morning games might be good luck. Maybe this needs to become routine for me.

I love playoff basketball. Go Hawks

peacenlove