Hawks Remain Lone East Team In Top 10 Vying For Postseason Spot

When you’re the Atlanta Hawks, you hang on to every possible shot at the NBA postseason with all your might.

The Hawks proved that in Monday’s impressive 113-101 road win over the Chicago Bulls, a game in which guard Vit Krejci made each of his six shots — all 3-pointers — to finish with a career-high 18 points.

It moved the Hawks a half-game behind the Bulls for the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference, which would mean home-court advantage in a play-in game.

Yet Atlanta (35-40) has yet to clinch a postseason berth. In fact, the Hawks are the only team in the top 10 to have not done so.

“With seven regular-season games remaining, the Hawks sit 5.5 games ahead of the Nets, who have six games remaining in their schedule,” wrote Lauren Williams of the Atlanta Journal Consitution. 

“Neither the Bulls nor the Hawks likely will make up ground for the seventh or eighth seeds. The third through seventh seeds have more than one game between them, and the eighth seed sits 2.5 games behind the sixth.”

In other words, things are oh-so-tight in the East, particularly when it comes to play-in positioning.

But pulling off wins like the one Monday will sure help the Hawks. They just need to do it a few more times as they wait and hope for star guard Trae Young to return.

Per Williams and Tankathon, the Hawks have the 14th-easiest remaining NBA schedule (with a visit to defending champion Denver in there); while the Bulls have the fourth-easiest.

Regardless, everyone assumes the Hawks will be in the NBA play-in. But as Williams noted, the question is where their play-in game will be held. 

If the season ended today, they would be visiting Chicago in the play-in as the final seed. On the bright side, the Hawks just proved they can win there.

• Coach Quin Snyder and wing Bogdan Bogdanovic brushed off their brief sideline encounter in which Bogdanovich slammed a water bottle and pointed at his chest as he yelled toward Snyder. “Quin is my guy, for sure,” Bogdanovich told reporters. “He was pushing me through the whole year. We have little fights. It’s normal that it happens. It’s sad that it happened on a game and on TV, so now that’s highlighted. But it’s just part of a game that we play. I think that’s normal. In our world, that’s kind of normal.”
• Snyder added: “Bogey was terrific, and he and I are in a great place — better than good.”