With four victories in their past six games, the Atlanta Hawks have a chance to move above .500 for the first time this season with a visit to the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday at Inglewood, Calif.
The short-handed Hawks pulled off a convincing 122-102 home victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday to end their opponents’ five-game winning streak. Each of the last three Atlanta victories have been by double digits.
With the Hawks’ four leading scorers out of action Saturday, Mouhamed Gueye led Atlanta with a career-high 21 points, while Zaccharie Risacher had 19 points. Dyson Daniels had 10 points with a career-high 13 assists.
“Credit Dyson. I think he was the catalyst,” said Hawks head coach Quin Snyder.
The victory came with a number of players watching from the bench in Trae Young (knee), Kristaps Porzingis (illness management), Jalen Johnson (quad), Nickeil Alexander-Walker (back) and former Clippers sharpshooter Luke Kennard (illness).
Four of those players average at least 17 points per game: Johnson (20.6), Young (17.8), Porzingis (17.6) and Alexander-Walker (17.6).
“We’re trying to stay true to fundamentally the things that we feel we need to do no matter who is in the game,” Snyder said. “If we’re not spaced, it’s hard to pass. … There has to be a collective understanding.”
That spacing and understanding, without two key ballhandlers in Johnson and Young, led to a season-high 37 assists, including 30 before the end of the third quarter. Gueye, at 6-foot-11, had seven of his own assists with seven rebounds. Keaton Wallace also had seven assists to tie a season high to go along with 14 points.
Now Atlanta hits the road, where it is 3-2 this season.
The Clippers have struggled to come up with a winning formula without Kawhi Leonard, who missed his third consecutive game Saturday because of an ankle injury. Los Angeles fell 114-103 to the visiting Phoenix Suns.
It was the Clippers’ fourth consecutive loss, with three of those at home where they started the season with a 3-0 mark. Ivica Zubac scored 21 points with 15 rebounds, while John Collins scored 19 points.
James Harden scored 13 points after missing Thursday’s loss at Phoenix for personal reasons, but he went just 4 of 15 from the floor and 2 of 10 from 3-point range.
The Clippers were outrebounded 42-27 and gave up 13 offensive rebounds to the Suns as well as 20 second-chance points.
“It’s a bad stretch right now, it’s a tough stretch, but we’ve been through that every year,” said the Clippers’ Nicolas Batum, who scored nine points. “We had a couple last year, and we still ended up with 50 wins. We’re a vet team, we just gotta come back, keep working. It’s tough right now, but we still have a chance to get better.”
Los Angeles was down by as many as 18 points in the third quarter before pulling within 106-101 with 3:54 to play. The Suns closed on an 8-2 run as the Clippers missed six of their last seven shots.
