The Atlanta Hawks are tanking, which they have not given any effort to mask. They will take their rickety lineup to Beantown this coming Sunday to face the playoff-bound Boston Celtics. Will the Hawks get an upset win? Or will Boston does Atlanta’s draft lottery chances a favor by taking the Hawks to the woodshed?
The Hawks are just plain bad this season. If they only had the option to quit playing the regular season, they probably would have done that a long time ago. The more losses they incur the more it benefits their chances of winning the NBA Draft lottery. Still, there are good players on this team (who are healthy and playing) like Tyler Dorsey and Damion Lee. We’re not saying they are stars, but serviceable ones with no baggage. Dorsey and Lee are averaging 13.4 and 12.6 points in the Hawks’ last five games, and if you’ve seen them play in college, you’d know they are very capable of scoring. The Hawks are also facing what could be a demoralized Boston team, which just learned that they lost Kyrie Irving for the entire season including the playoffs. That could be an intangible key factor for an Atlanta victory in Beantown this Sunday.
Atlanta is 5-5 ATS in its last five games versus the Celtics.
As mentioned earlier, the Celtics might be feeling a little bit down because Kyrie Irving’s exit this season no thanks to a knee operation to get a wire out of his knee. That said, on paper, the Celtics have more than enough quality players to beat a team like the Hawks, who are already missing their best player in Dennis Schroder because of an ankle sprain. The Hawks’ roster is one that could be mistaken for a G League squad, unlike the Kyrie-less Boston team that still has Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Terry Rozier. Speaking of Rozier, the Louisville product scored 31 points on Feb. 2 when Boston shot down the Hawks, 119-110 at TD Garden. Tatum has averaged 20.7 points in three meetings this season with Atlanta, while Brown has chipped in 19.0.
Boston is 6-4 ATs in its last 10 home games against the Hawks.
