What if Josh Smith isn’t slowed with a knee injury, forcing him to miss Game 3?

What if one basket or stop goes differently down the stretch in Game 2, 3 OR 6?

All of these questions can eat at Hawks fans (not to mention players and coaches) as they settle in for the summer offseason. Now the NBA has officially given them one last “What if” to ponder.

FROM NBA.COM/OFFICIAL:
“With 3.1 seconds remaining in the the Boston-Atlanta game last night, a foul was called on the Celtics’ Marquis Daniels after the Hawks’ Marvin Williams had released the ball and therefore the foul was correctly treated as a common foul and not an Away-From-the-Play foul. With that said, however, the replay shows that the foul on Daniels should have been called sooner than it was by the officials, in which case it would have met the requirements of an Away-From-The-Play Foul.”

When an “Away-From-The-Play Foul” is called, the inbounding team is awarded one free-throw AND possession. Instead, the Hawks were not in the bonus yet, and maintained possession for a sideline inbounds.

“That would have been a huge play, a huge turn of events,” Josh Smith told the AJC’s Michael Cunningham. Indeed, it just adds one more “What If” to motivate Atlanta through offseason workouts as the NBA Playoffs move on without the Hawks.

Atlanta opened the season with nine games in 12 days (they were the only team in the league to have such a hectic early schedule) and used the “traditional” starting lineup for each contest. Then, Marvin Williams was injured in the game on January 7, and Al Horford suffered his more serious injury just a few days later, forcing LD to juggle his lineup ever since.

Tonight the crew is reunited. The five players that many Hawks fans would identify as the “core” of the team will all be on the floor when the ball goes up. After all, this is an elimination game. There is no tomorrow if Atlanta does not show up and put their best foot forward tonight.

MORE FROM THE BLOG: Step One – Win Game 5

Boston was much more effective in Game 4, but not because they came in with a different strategy or gameplan. They made shots. Plain and simple. Some of them were contested, some of them were open looks. Every team has games where the other team seems to get all the breaks and they are never able to seize momentum. Unfortunately, that game was on Sunday night for the Hawks.

The good news is that point diferential does not get you anything in the playoffs. A loss is a loss, but it is only one game. It is still first team to four wins advances, and step one for Atlanta will be to get a win at the Highlight Factory on Tuesday.

SMITH’S INJURY A STRAINED LEFT TENDON, STATUS DAY-TO-DAY

ATLANTA, GA – Atlanta forward Josh Smith, who left Tuesday’s game against
Boston with a sprained left knee, was diagnosed with a strained left tendon and
his status is day-to-day.

So you can add Smith to the list of wounded Atlanta big men, but hope that his “day-to-day” classification leads to a quick return to action. The injury appears to be related to the tendinitis that Smoove has battled all season long. Josh and fellow starter Jeff Teague were the only Hawks players to appear in all 66 regular season games, and they joined only 14 other players around the entire league that started all 66.

Meanwhile, Zaza Pachulia’s day-to-day has turned into week-to-week, as Friday will make it three weeks since he injured his foot in Orlando. Big Z has seen improvement over the last few days and has not ruled out a return on Friday for Game 3.

With two days off in between Game 2 and Game 3, the Hawks will have time to watch a lot of film and make strategic adjustments in an effort to regain home court advantage with a win in Boston. Maybe more importantly, the two days off will provide time to rest and (hopefully) recover.

“We said early we really wanted to dictate the rhythm of the game of getting out and running and exploring what we had in transition,” Atlanta head coach Larry Drew said after the win. “If it wasn’t there, then we ran our secondary offense.”

Atlanta’s guard tandem of Jeff Teague and Kirk Hinrich was accurate from behind the arc, combining to hit 6-of-8 from long range. They hit three triples in the first quarter to help the Hawks establish their big lead.

The Celtics, as expected, did not go quietly despite the early deficit. After the Atlanta lead swelled to 19 points in the third quarter, Boston made one last push and got as close as four points in the closing minutes.

“We knew they were going to be able to calm their nerves down and be able to get back to the way they play basketball,” said Josh Smith postgame. “We didn’t feel the pressure of needing to get a bucket. That’s just us being able to be in the playoffs multiple years and understand situations. We dug ourselves out of holes when the right time presented itself.”

The Hawks did this all without much offensive production from Joe Johnson. Joe was limited to just one point in the second half, finishing the game with 11. He did play stellar defense the entire night, holding Paul Pierce to just 12 points on 5-of-19 shooting. The encouraging thing must be that Atlanta was still able to secure the victory when Joe had an off night.

The two teams will return to action on Tuesday night at the Highlight Factory, and the Hawks will look to take a 2-0 lead in the series before it moves to Boston later in the week.

GAME NOTES:

– The Hawks led from start to finish, knocking off the Celtics 83-74 at Philips Arena on Sunday to take a 1-0 series lead.

– Josh Smith led the way with 22 points and postseason career-best 18 rebounds … Jeff Teague scored 15 points, Kirk Hinrich 12 and Joe Johnson 11.

– Atlanta opened the game on a 20-6 run, pushed the lead to as many as 17, before settling for a 31-18 edge after one … Both teams played solid defense in the quarter but the Hawks won the stanza, 18-17, to take a 49-35 advantage at the break (after being up 19).

– Boston managed to cut it to 65-53 after three and 78-74 with one minute to play, but Johnson, Smith and Teague all hit clutch free throws down the stretch to ice it for the home team.

– The Celtics finished 0-11 from three-point range and shot .390 overall … Atlanta won the battle of the boards 50-41.

– Kevin Garnett (20 points\12 rebounds) and Rajon Rondo (20 points\11 assists) each had double-doubles for the Celtics.

– The Hawks reserves outscored their Boston counterparts 17-4.

– Game 2 is set for Tuesday (5\1) at Philips Arena at 7:30pm (SPSO HD, NBA TV and 98.9 FM).

“If I thought our guys were banged up, I’d sit them. That’s not even a question for me,” Rivers said. “I’m taking rest and rhythm over home court.”

Boston has one of the older teams in the league, and they value rest and fresh legs as much as anyone, but a quick look at their record over this season and in recent postseasons and Rivers may have rushed to judgement in this instance.

The Celtics finished this season with one of the best home records in the league at 24-9, but finished three games below .500 when they played away from TD Garden. More than that, since Boston united the “Big 3″ they have never finished a postseason above .500 on the road. Going back to when they began the 2008 playoffs until now, the Celtics are 30-8 at home in the postseason, but are just 13-22 on the road.

“Home court is great,” said Celtics forward Paul Pierce. “You want to have home court, you want to play for home court. At the end of the day, we want to be healthy first. We’re definitely a better home team than road team.”

The reality is that home court advantage is just that – an advantage. Now that the season has transitioned into the playoffs, where the intensity grows each game, the Hawks will take any advantage they can get.

There are some in the media (and some in the Hawks’ fan base) that believe that Boston is a bad match-up for the Hawks. First off, this is the playoffs. You aren’t going to get an easy match-up anywhere. Those teams are already sitting at home watching on TV.

In terms of personnel, the Celtics are NOT a bad match up for Atlanta. Coach Drew recently talked about how Atlanta respects the Celtics, but they are definitely not intimidated by this first round match-up:

Many will point to the fact that the Celtics beat the Hawks twice this season when both teams were close to full strength. That is a true statement. (We are going to ignore the last game when Rondo, Garnett, Pierce and Allen all were inactive.)

What is also true is that the Hawks dictated play throughout a majority of both games. In fact, they led for over 25 minutes of the first game at Philips Arena, compared to the 14 minutes that Boston was in front. Then, in Boston, the Hawks led for over 33 minutes of regulation, compared to just nine for the Celtics (it was tied for 5 minutes). Take away a couple spurts of cold shooting that you would be hard pressed to blame on Boston’s defense, and the result of each game would have been different.

The Hawks have made it to the playoffs each of the past four years and their first rounds series are never easy. Starting with the seven-game thriller against Boston back in 2008, the Hawks have played 27-of-28 possible first round games, with last year’s six-game series with Orlando serving as the only one that didn’t go the distance.

The point is that the Playoffs are tough. They are supposed to be.

Boston is a tough opponent. Give them respect. Then give them toughness right back.

Both players (Pierce and Garnett) were at the team’s shootaround at Georgia Tech University, but neither will play. Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen and Mickael Pietrus are back in Boston, meaning the starting lineup tonight is likely Avery Bradley, Keyon Dooling, Sasha Pavlovic, Brandon Bass and Greg Stiemsma.

The move sends a clear message from Celtics’ coach Doc Rivers that the team will focus on getting players healthy and rested rather than pushing hard to lock up home court advantage. Boston is locked in to the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, but could start the playoffs on the road if the fifth seed (currently the Hawks) has a better record. Atlanta enters tonight’s game with a half game lead over the Celtics and will move two games ahead in the loss column with a win.

First Round Match-Up Almost Set
With the Pacers win last night (see results below) they clinched finishing ahead of the Celtics and are now dormie* against the Hawks. This means that Boston can do no better than the fourth best record in the East, and since they won the Atlantic Division (and are guaranteed a top-four seed) they will be the #4-seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

So, with Boston at the four, the only way Atlanta will not be their first round opponent is if they move up to the third seed or if they fall to the six seed. The Hawks own the tie-breaker over Indy, so the only way they can move up is if they win out and the Pacers lose their last three games. The Hawks lead the Magic by a game for the sixth seed, and since Atlanta owns the tie-breaker there as well, they would need to drop a game behind Orlando to fall to the six spot.

It is cumbersome to explain with words, but our number-crunching friends over at SportsClubStats.com do a great job of breaking things down. Their latest data shows that the Hawks have almost a 93% chance of facing the Celtics in the first round. The bigger variable is who will have home court advantage, and tonight will go a long way in determining that outcome.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ANALYSIS FROM SportsClubStats.com

What happened last night:

• Pacers 118 – Bucks 109 (@ Indiana)
  Indiana secured home court in the first round while Milwaukee’s playoff aspirations continue to fade.

———————

Another resource that uses numbers way above most of our heads is ESPN’s John Hollinger. He is a frequent visitor to the Highlight Factory and breaks down nearly every facet of NBA basketball with statistics and probabilities. For his “Daily Playoff Odds” he runs the remaining schedule through the computer 5,000 times to churn out the most likely results. Right now he has the Hawks finishing 39-27, tied with Boston for the fourth best record in the East. CLICK HERE for his complete breakdown.

* – You Ryder Cup fans will recognize this golf term in match play that refers to when one player/team is ahead by the same number of holes that remain. This means that the other player/team can tie the match but cannot win.

Little Room for Error
The Hawks and Celtics both won last night (see full results below), meaning that Atlanta maintained its half game lead for the fourth best record in the Eastern Conference. Boston has one more loss than the Hawks, and the same amount of victories.

With Boston owning the tie-breaker over Atlanta (due to winning the Atlantic Division and/or winning the season series), Friday’s head-to-head match-up will go a long way to determine who owns home court advantage in the first round. With a win the Hawks will be two games ahead in the loss column with only three games to play. If Atlanta loses they will need to run the table in their final three games and hope Boston stumbles at home against either Miami or Milwaukee.

What happened last night:

• Celtics 102 – Magic 98 (@ Boston)
  The Celtics held on against a Magic team that wouldn’t quit while playing without Dwight Howard. The win clinched the Atlantic Division crown for Boston. Orlando now has a tough pair of games out West against teams that are battling for playoff position of their own (Utah and Denver).
• Hawks 116 – Pistons 84 (@ Atlanta)
  Atlanta moved a season-high 12 games over .500 with a 32-point thumping of Detroit. Everyone got involved as no starter played over 23 minutes.
• Wizards 121 – Bucks 112 (@ Washington)
  A devastating loss for Milwaukee who is now 2.5 games out of the final playoff spot with just a handful of games remaining.
• 76ers 103 – Cavs 87 (@ Cleveland)
  It wasn’t a “must win” game for Philly, but it might have felt like it in their locker room.
• Knicks 104 – Nets 105 (@ New Jersey)
  New York fought off a pesky Nets team to keep hope alive that they can catch the Magic to climb up to the sixth seed.

With just 9 days left until the playoffs tip-off, our number-crunching friends over at SportsClubStats.com have stepped up their game even more and are now giving us the probability of facing each opponent in the first round along with the seeding:

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ANALYSIS FROM SportsClubStats.com

Another resource that uses numbers way above most of our heads is ESPN’s John Hollinger. He is a frequent visitor to the Highlight Factory and breaks down nearly every facet of NBA basketball with statistics and probabilities. For his “Daily Playoff Odds” he runs the remaining schedule through the computer 5,000 times to churn out the most likely results. Right now he has the Hawks finishing 39-27, tied with Boston for the fourth best record in the East. CLICK HERE for his complete breakdown.