HOOPSWORLD | Basketball News & NBA Rumors

As the opening round series shifted back to Orlando for a pivotal game five the vast majority fully expected the Magic, trailing 3-1, to hit the Atlanta Hawks with their best punch.

The question everyone wanted to know was how the Hawks would respond on the road faced with an Orlando team clicking on all cylinders. The short answer – not well.

After successfully frustrating, nullifying and out hustling the Magic through the first four games of the series, the Hawks suffered the lone blowout defeat of the matchup Tuesday night.

The twenty-five point victory in front of their home crowd breathed new life into the Magic and shifted the momentum of the series back to the side of the expected favorites as the team attempts to become just the ninth in NBA history to rally back from a 3-1 series deficit.

But even with the loss, Hawks players are still speaking confidently.

"We’re still in the driver’s seat," Hawks forward Marvin Williams told HOOPSWORLD. "No reason to panic. We’re feeling confident."

Veteran point guard Kirk Hinrich, who scored six points and dished out three assists in the game five loss, mirrored the same confidence level as Williams.

"We feel confident," Hinrich told HOOPSWORLD. "This isn’t going to shake our confidence.   Give them credit. They played great tonight. But we still have confidence."

Part of the confidence stems from the fact the series will head back to the comfy confines of Philips Arena where Atlanta took games three and four to secure the advantage.

However, the Hawks readily admit they will approach game six on Thursday night like it has game seven implications. Orlando has home court advantage and the Hawks want no part of heading down to Florida to take in any additional sunshine.

"I think the biggest thing is we don’t want to come back here for a game seven," Williams said. "I don’t think anyone wants to come back because anything can happen in game seven. Playing in front of a crowd like this they’re more energized as a team. If we can put them away on Thursday it would be good for us"

Josh Smith, one of Atlanta’s three team captains, took the loss hard and believes the Hawks need to respond with much more passion, heart and intensity.

"[It is] real tough," Smith told HOOPSWORLD in regards to dropping game five. "They played their ‘A’ game tonight and they needed to play that way in order to win this game. They just played with a certain passion and we got to do a better job in creating a little more resistance than we did in this game if we want to close this series out."

One of the biggest accomplishments for the Hawks during the series has been their ability to stifle Orlando’s usually potent offensive attack. Entering game five, the Magic as a team was shooting a woeful 40 percent from the floor.

While Orlando only shot 41 percent in game five it was accomplished on more balanced scoring placing three players in double figures and four players finishing with nine points. Better yet, the team connected on 11-of-26 shots (41 percent) from three-point range.

The Hawks knew eventually that Orlando’s shot would start falling at some point. 

"They shot the ball extremely well from the three-point line," Smith said. "They did everything they needed to do execution wise in order to win this game. We just got to go and understand our mistakes, look at some film and just learn from it and try to get better."

{AUTHOR_BOX} Williams was quick to point out that while Atlanta’s strategic adjustment to defend center Dwight Howard one-on-one and stay home on the Magic’s shooters played a role in Orlando’s  abysmal field goal percentage, some of the success shouldn’t be attributed to sound defense.

"What hasn’t happened all series and really all season is these guys made shots," Williams explained. "Especially from the three-point line. Give them a lot of credit, they continued to shoot the ball and once they made one it seemed like they started making them from all over the place. We had some defensive breakdowns tonight. But like I said it wasn’t all defense they had missed some shots they normally make and tonight they made them."

Smith readily admits that Orlando’s confidence is likely to improve after finally seeing some of their shots touch the bottom of the net and says the Hawks need to find an answer to shut them down again.

"If you shoot like they did, it can if we don’t stop it in a hurry," Smith answered when asked if Orlando’s good shooting can carry over into game six. "We have to minimize something. We can’t to give up too many things. It has to be only one thing we give up and everything else we have to cut their water off on."

"Eventually we knew they would make [shots]," Williams said to HOOPSWORLD. "Unfortunately we had an opportunity to close them out and now they got a win and they’re taking it back to our place. We got to do a better job defensively on Thursday."

Atlanta still possess a strong 3-2 series lead but if you told anyone before the game Howard would be limited to 8 points and 8 rebounds, coupled with the way the rest of the Magic was shooting, not many would’ve picked against the Hawks marching into the second round.

However, the rest of the Magic stepped up and helped their superstar.

"I mean everybody got involved tonight," Smith assessed. "I wouldn’t envision losing by that much with the stats h [Howard] he gave, but at the same time everybody got involved so everybody had an opportunity to stay in the game offensively and that makes you want to play that much harder defensively for each other."

Closing out a team, especially on the road, is one of the toughest things to do in sports. So now Atlanta must regroup and handle business in game six.

Hinrich, Smith and Williams all agreed with the degree of difficulty in elimination games.

"Your right about that," Williams agreed. "Orlando is a good team.  Up 3-1, I don’t think anyone in here relaxed.  They’re very well coached and they play extremely well. We knew they just wouldn’t give in."

"It’s not only hard to close [a series] out, it’s hard to close it out on another team’s home court," Smith told HOOPSWORLD. "They came out ready and with a lot of pride. We tried to answer but we couldn’t stop them offensively."

"Their backs were against the wall tonight," Hinrich said. "It’s one of those gut check games. I’ve been in elimination games on both sides. The mentality is if we’re going to go down, we’re going down blazing. They did that tonight and we have to come forward with a much better effort in game six".

The Hawks have two games to get it done in order to meet up with Chicago in the second round, but it would be in their best interest to eliminate any drama or fancy storylines by getting job done on Thursday at home – Philips Arena.

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