Atlanta Kept Getting the Ball Back

There is a particular kind of letdown built into a night like this one, and it has nothing to do with who won.

For two days this city has been pointed at a reunion. Wednesday in Washington, Friday at home, the same two teams twice, one man in the middle of it. And here is the thing that took me a day to get straight: Trae Young had never played a game against the Atlanta Hawks. Not once since January, when he went to Washington and CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert came back the other way. Reuters had it on Tuesday. The box scores confirm it — both times these clubs met in February, he did not play a minute.

I wrote yesterday that Atlanta had already finished its goodbye, that the tribute video and the standing ovation and the No. 11 jerseys had all been spent on a man who could not play in any of it.

Tonight he played. Atlanta won 120-105 at Capital One Arena, and the quietly deflating truth of the evening is that he was barely the story.

### Washington did the better-looking things

Washington shot 48 percent from the floor. Atlanta shot 45. Washington scored 62 points in the paint to Atlanta's 50. Washington blocked nine shots; Atlanta blocked two. Cover the score, read that stack of numbers cold, and you would not pick the winner.

Then you find the two that actually moved the game. Atlanta made nineteen threes and Washington made six. And Atlanta took 101 shots to Washington's 88.

That second number is the whole piece. Thirteen extra attempts is not a hot streak and it is not a stylistic preference. It is possession, and Atlanta bought it one carom at a time — nineteen offensive rebounds against Washington's nine, on a night that finished with fifty-seven rebounds in total. Both of those are season highs, and neither is a photo finish. The previous bests were fifty-three and seventeen.

### The two men who did it

Onyeka Okongwu had sixteen rebounds. Dyson Daniels had sixteen rebounds. Neither of them led the Hawks in rebounding tonight, because you cannot lead a category you are tied in — and between them they accounted for thirty-two of the fifty-seven, which is more than half of everything Atlanta grabbed.

Daniels is a guard. He took seven of those nineteen offensive rebounds himself, handed out eight assists, posted the best plus-minus on the floor at plus-twenty-one, and scored eight points while he was at it. That is a gorgeous, slightly absurd line. It reads like a man who decided the way to win a basketball game was to refuse to let the possession end.

### The shape of it

Atlanta won every quarter — 37-32, 31-29, 25-24, 27-20. That is not the silhouette of a team that caught fire for six minutes. It is the silhouette of a team that was a little bit better at the same thing for two hours, which is a harder thing to do and a much harder thing to argue with.

They did it without Jalen Johnson, whose ankle has now kept him out of two straight, and without Jock Landale's hip. Quin Snyder has now won two in a row missing both, after the 108-104 at Indiana on Monday. Nickeil Alexander-Walker's twenty-six led the scoring, two nights after he put up thirty-four in Indianapolis, and five other Hawks reached double figures behind him.

Young finished with eighteen points and six assists, under the 19.9 and 10.0 he walked in averaging, and at minus-nineteen he carried the worst mark of any Washington starter.

### What it isn't

None of which settles a thing. Washington are 4-4 and they were essentially whole; Atlanta are 5-4 and they were not. Eighteen and six against the team that traded you is a quiet night, not a bad one. Nine games into eighty-two, nobody won a trade tonight, and this franchise has been burned too many times by November to start handing out verdicts in it.

But Atlanta did learn something. The game it had been bracing for, the one with the man it spent seven years building around standing in the other huddle, turned out to be a referendum on who wanted the ball after a miss. Not on him. On the rim.

Friday he comes to State Farm Arena, and that one carries a little more freight — it is an NBA Cup group game, Atlanta's first of the season. The ovation is already spent. He will have to make do with a basketball game.