The Hawks may not have gotten off to a great start Wednesday night at State Farm Arena, but guard Dejounte Murray gave them the finish they needed.
With 9.2 seconds left to play, Magic forward Paolo Banchero drained a 3-point shot from the wing to tie the score at 104-104. Murray moved quickly and inbounded the ball to teammate Jalen Johnson before getting the ball back. He took off with just under five seconds to play, crossing halfcourt before driving to the elbow.
Murray then pulled up, and Magic guard Markelle Fultz rose with him to contest the shot. But Murray drained the jumper, leaving four-tenths of a second left in the game, solidifying the Hawks’ 106-104 win.
“I mean, it’s a make-or-miss league,” Murray said. “You’re gonna make or miss shots. But with me, I always feel like I’m gonna make the next shot if I miss a shot. So it just come from just working hard and just being extremely confident in myself, even my teammates. If my teammate took the shot, I believe it’s going in. So, I didn’t shoot it with intention of, ‘Oh, I’m going to miss this shot.’ It’s like, ‘Let’s go home. I made the shot.”
The Hawks shot over 50% from the field Wednesday, and they needed every bit of it after they struggled to take care of the ball and close out defensive possessions. The Hawks gave up 25 second-chance points off of 16 offensive rebounds.
But the Hawks had enough trust in each other, despite a little miscommunication at the end of the game.
In the final seconds of Wednesday’s game, it appeared Hawks coach Quin Snyder signaled for a timeout around the same time Murray got the ball out in transition. But officials did not see the timeout, and Snyder signaled to continue, and Murray raced the ball up the floor and pulled up for the jumper.
“I mean, when the ball (Banchero’s 3) went in, the first thing I think about is if we have a timeout or not, and if we’re going to go,” point guatrd Trae Young said Wednesday. “And so I looked up real quick, saw we had a timeout and saw that they were pressuring and thought we were just going to call a timeout. And Quin actually was telling the ref ‘timeout’ and he didn’t hear him. And I mean, the refs weren’t hearing a lot of people all game. So it worked in our favor there.
“And (the ref) didn’t hear (Quin), and then we got the ball to DJ, and DJ did his thing. So that’s why I was kind of jumping. I’m like looking at the ref thinking, ‘He’s literally telling you timeout. Oh, OK. OK. DJ, got the ball, so now we’re good.’ We got him the ball and let him do his thing, and we’re (up). So I think the best thing was just getting in transition and make a play, and Quin did a great job not calling timeout. And we all just spaced for DJ and let him do his thing.”
With that jumper, the Hawks held off overtime for the third time in six games and the second time against the Magic in 10 days. It also gave the Hawks a second consecutive win to cap their five-game homestand, in which they were 3-2.
The Hawks now move to 17-23 on the season and into sole possession of 10th place in the Eastern Conference.
This season has unfolded a little differently than some may have imagined. The Hawks have struggled with several things this season, which has raised questions of how they will proceed with the Feb. 8 trade deadline quickly approaching.
Questions of Murray’s and Young’s fit together continue to linger. But Snyder said that their connection and how they played off each other Wednesday stuck out to him the most.
Murray scored 26 points, had five rebounds, five assists and two steals in Wednesday’s contest, while Young had 18 points, three rebounds, 12 assists and one steal.
Despite that, the decision not to call (or possibly attempt to call) a timeout after Banchero’s 3-point shot came up.
“Yeah, that’s always a debate,” Snyder said. “You call timeout, the defense gets set, and they substitute, and DJ rewarded that with confidence, and happy for him. It was contested. That’s a shot he can make, and he did.
“It was more significant to me even prior to that, the last five minutes. With those two guys playing pick and roll, Trae playing pick and roll with JJ, I thought we were able to manufacture some good shots. And you know Trae puts so much pressure on when he drives, and he got to the line, and he got fouled.”
The Hawks have a tough stretch of games ahead of them, including away and home back-to-back games against the Heat and Cavaliers on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Then they head to the Bay Area, where they will face the Kings and Warriors in a quick West Coast trip before heading home for another long homestand.
They could continue to make up some ground after their early slide from as high as fifth in the East before Johnson’s injury in November. They dropped to as low as 12th on Jan. 7 and have slowly clawed back to 10th, the final spot for the postseason Play-In Tournament.
But the Hawks want to compete.
“At the end of the day, hopefully it just brings confidence, but we still want to win games better than that,” Murray said. “You don’t want to take games to the last-second shot. We got a lot of things we got to work out, which one is taking care of the ball, starting with myself on down, and like I said, at the end of the day, we want to be in better games than that.”
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