On Tuesday night the Atlanta Hawks knocked the Cleveland Cavaliers from the ranks of the unbeaten. They must’ve carried some momentum from that game into there Wednesday night match up against the Chicago Bulls as they came through with a 115-107 victory.
Nikola Mirotic made 2 free throws to tie the game at 24 with 1:40 left in the 1st quarter. The teams had played pretty even with each other as neither team could build more than a 3 point lead. Then in that final 1:40 Atlanta went on a 11 to 3 run to open up a 35-27 lead after one quarter.
Paul Millsap gave the Hawks a 17 point lead at 50-33 with just under 9 minutes to go in the quarter. Then it was the Bulls turn to make a run as they put up 28 points for the remainder of the quarter to Atlanta’s 18 points. The Bulls actually ended up outscoring Atlanta in the 2nd quarter by 1 point 34-33. The Hawks headed into halftime with a 68-61 lead.
The Bulls run kept going into the 3rd quarter and with 7:48 left in the quarter a Dwayne Wade lay up tied the score at 76. The Bulls continued on to build a 5 point lead at 85-80, but Atlanta bounced back with a run of 14-8 to take a 94-88 lead head into the final quarter.
The Bulls where never able to get closer than 6 points in the 4th quarter. The Hawks went on to outscore the Bulls in the 4th period 21-19 and that got the game to the final score of 115-107.
The Hawks had 8 players score in double figures led by Thabo Sefolosha who came off the bench to score 20 points. Dwight Howard had a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Howard even made 6 of the 9 free throws he shot. Paul Millsap also had a double-double with 16 points and a game high 11 rebounds. Dennis Schroder had 13 points while Kyle Korver, Mike Muscala (off the bench) and Tim Hardaway Jr. (off the bench) each had 11 points. Malcolm Delaney was the final Hawks player in double figures with 10 points. Kent Bazemore handed out 7 assists for the Hawks which tied him for the game high in assists.
The Bulls where led by Jimmy Butler who scored a game high 39 points tied Bazemore with 7 assists and also had 6 steals. Dwayne Wade added 25 points for the Bulls and Taj Gibson out up 13 points and grabbed a team high 6 rebounds. The Bulls bench combined to score just 18 points in the game.
With the win the Hawks improve to 6-2 and they’ll get a day off before hosting the 0-7 Philadelphia 76ers on Friday. The Bulls drop back to .500 at 4-4 and they have to turn around and head to Miami to play the 2-4 Heat tonight.
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