Hawks' reassurance growing afterward split in Chic

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ATLANTA – Larry Drew likes the look of these playoffs.

He's sensibility beautiful good about his own team, also.

There are upsets entire approximately in the NBA postseason. Top-seeded San Antonio has already been excluded. The vindicating champion Los Angeles Lakers are in distress. And Drew, the rookie coach of the Atlanta Hawks, sees not reason why his own team can't go farther than anyone would've expected.

"This thing is broad open," he said Thursday.

The Hawks have already knocked out Dwight Howard and Orlando, a team namely swept Atlanta from the playoffs in lopsided form a year ago. They're attempting to follow a similar script in the Eastern Conference semifinals, having stolen a victory in Game 1 against the Chicago Bulls, a 62-win juggernaut during the regular season.

Even coming off a series-tying loss,american eagle warehouse, the Hawks are exuding reassurance for they return home for the afterward two contests. Game 3 is Friday, which fashions up as the most meaningful night in 14 years for a franchise that has largely been an NBA wilderness.

"We feel agreeable approximately where we're at," said Jamal Crawford, the Hawks' super sub. "We feel like we took their best punch."

Chicago, of course, would rather to emulate the script. The Bulls won 18 more game than Atlanta during the regular season and are in no mood to be the straw for another playoff upset.

After a terrible 103-95 defeat in the series key, Chicago played with a sense of desperation Thursday night. The Bulls prevailed the boards 58-39, turned the Hawks' misdemeanour into a stagnant shambles (34 percent shooting), hustled for seemingly each lax pellet and pulled away for an 86-73 victory.

"We tin forever tread it up. You can all improve in every game," league MVP Derrick Rose said. "But we've got to continue to make hustle melodramas for it's just going to obtain harder."

Indeed, the Hawks really took some comfort from the way they lost.

Despite the obvious deficiencies, Atlanta was still in the game with about 4 minutes left, trailing by 6 and poised to pull off another upset. It didn't work out, but the Hawks know they can stick with a team that put up the best record in the league.

"Whatever mistrust might have been seeping into our guys' heads, that doubt was expunged afterward Game 1," Drew said. "Even though we lost Game 2, there wasn't a knockout blow. There was all this speak about how they would bring ... to an end with all this stamina and anything. Well, we didn't feel that. ... They didn't put us away."

At the end, they did.

Now it's behind to Atlanta to play in front of what diagrams to be a raucous sellout cap, an anomaly in this attendance-challenged city. This namely the maximum major family playoff game for the Hawks since 1997, while they also were knotted 1-1 in a second-round catena opposition the Michael Jordan-led Bulls.

That one didn't work out so well for Atlanta. The Bulls won Game 3 and the next two, as well to knock out the Hawks on the way to Jordan's fifth of six titles.

This is a different postseason scenery. No team has come across as unbeatable, not even the Miami Heat with their Big Three. The eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies knocked off the robust Spurs out West, and hardly ever every series has been competitive.

"We have one of the best accidents to obtain this thing, better than anyone in the league," Hawks star Joe Johnson said. "We want to take convenience of it."
The Bulls struggled in the first round to put away Indiana a team with a losing log during the normal season. If they didn't before, they certainly achieve now it's not going to be a smooth ride to their first NBA caption since No. 23 ruled Chi-Town.
Carlos Boozer is coming off another rowdy outing: 8 points on 4-of-12 shooting. That merely tells portion of the story, although. He got blocked quadruple in the second half by Josh Smith and booed by the home audience.
Boozer sustained a turf toe injury on his right foot in the opening round against Indiana, and that certainly isn't assisting.
"Carlos is out there, he's playing ache," amenable Luol Deng said. "It's one of those injuries that sounds, when you just mention a toe, it doesn't sound like many,wholesale fabric handbags, but it's an annoying injury. I understand he'll get his rhythm, but I thought final night he was diving on the floor. He was hustling. For us, he was truly playing well."
Rose also needs to get it going. He's averaging 24.5 points a game but shooting just 39 percent, with 11 turnovers.
"I want to discern him aggression. He has to get to the line more," coach Tom Thibodeau said. "We have to establish more space. We have to play with more pace. When we can get Derrick into the open ground, he has more scenes where he can get to the rim."
Atlanta guard Jeff Teague, filling in as the harmed Kirk Hinrich, has done an amazing job aboard the MVP in the premier 2 games, slitting off his lanes to the basket and forcing him to put up extra jumpers than he'd like. Teague too contributed by the offensive end, averaging 15.5 points and turning it over equitable 1 time in 84 minutes.
Johnson and Crawford dominated in Game 1, so the Bulls threw superfluity of double-teams at both. Atlanta needs to get others involved in the offense, primarily All-Star Al Horford, and a more invariable representation out of the enigmatic Smith would sure help.
His influenced play in the third 15 min helped the Hawks get back in the game, but Smith made just 4 of 14 shots numerous of them out of his scope and looked downright sloppy turning it over quadruple.
Drew lectured Smith before train Thursday.
"His shot culling was not very good. He was trying to do too much," Drew said. "He acknowledged that was the circumstance. He didn't feel good about the course he played."
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AP Sports Writer Andrew Seligman in Deerfield, Ill., contributed to this report.