Atlanta Hawks: Wizards 115, Hawks 83

WASHINGTON–You kinda get the feeling the Hawks really aren’t buying into this momentum for the playoffs thing.

• “Kinda get the feeling?” L.D. said. “That’s one of the biggest challenges of a coach when you get in these situations with a spot sealed up. The mindset for some players in this situation is the games have no meaning.”
• “Guys were really just going through the motions out there,” Al said.
• Since the Hawks have made it clear they really don’t care about these games, the question is whether they can suddenly turn it on for the playoffs.
• “I honestly don’t know because you have to have some type of momentum going into the playoffs,” Al said. “Even if you are not winning you have to be playing well. I think we were doing that about a week ago and these last two games we just kind of laid down.”
• “I hope so,” J.J. said. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s been pretty much unacceptable the last two games. I can’t really just pinpoint one thing. We just haven’t been playing hard. We have got to try to get back on track on Monday.”
• “We are going to have to at the end of the day,” Marvin said. “Starters and subs, we are going to have to put it together defensively. We’ve been to the playoffs before. We’ve won first rounds before. Obviously are goal is bigger than that this year but we know what it takes. I think when it is time to go people will really be focused in.”
• “I am not very confident at all,” L.D. said. “I have been in this situation before, having been in the league a long time. You can’t just flip the switch. It just doesn’t work like that. You want to carry momentum as you finish the regular season as you move into the playoffs. I’ve been around this thing long enough to see that you just can’t turn it on and turn it off. You want to be playing well, you want to be clicking.”
• The Hawks are locked into the five seed. They were without Smoove and Twin.The starters didn’t play their usual minutes again.
• I will see those excuses and raise you the Wizards playing five rooks among their 10 players, with there D-League refugees among them. Also note that the Hawks took their fourth 30-point L of the season and are now -48 in point differential despite their 44 Ws.
• Believe it or not, the Hawks say they actually planned to do something tonight. “We wanted to come out and try to get some kind of rhythm, chemistry,” J.J. said. “These last few games it doesn’t seem like we’ve got it.”
• Not much worth mentioning about the Hawks in this game.
• Teague was aggressive. Jamal had a decent scoring run. Pape Sy scored his first NBA points. Al got some rebounds (though a Wiz guard named Othyus Jeffers got more). Joe was going hard to the hole again. Hilton Armstrong has awful hands.
• JC2 got into early foul trouble trying to check Joe. When he came back he was in playmaking mode instead of his usual shoot-at-every-chance posture. Mo was 5 for 5 with three dunks, a tip-in and a layup.
• “Every time somebody gets traded, you always want to try to help them go at that team,” Andray Blatche. “That’s pretty much what we did. We tried to let them go out and have fun and tried to beat [Atlanta] as bad as we could.”
• Add Andray Blatche talking mess to the list of indignities for the Hawks.
• “In our league no matter how good or bad you are, there is a point in the game where you might say ‘tonight is not the night,’ and I think that is what happened for them,” Flip Saunders said.
• It’s happened a lot to these Hawks even when the games matter, so even though this one didn’t it’s still not a good look.

Michael Cunningham, Hawks beat