Atlanta Led for Four Percent of It

There is the kind of loss that gets away from you late, and there is the other kind — the one where you look up midway through the first quarter and the night has already decided what it intends to be.

Wednesday was the second kind. Miami scored thirty-four points in the first twelve minutes, and Atlanta spent the next thirty-six chasing a game they never once led by more than three.

Here is the number that holds the whole evening. Atlanta led for four percent of this basketball game. Their largest lead, at any point, was three points. Miami's was eighteen, and Miami were in front for ninety percent of the night.

Miami came in 0-4. They had not won a game all season. They left State Farm Arena 1-4.

### The thing I argued for did not come home

On Monday I wrote that I had been wrong about Dyson Daniels but right about the pressure — that Atlanta forcing twenty-one Houston turnovers and converting thirty-two points off them was the identity I had spent two pieces looking for, and that it had finally arrived, just not through the guard I named.

Wednesday it was sixteen turnovers forced and fifteen points off them. Six steals.

So the honest version is that the thing is intermittent. Two nights ago it was the most this team had converted off turnovers all season. Wednesday it was less than half of that, against a team that had lost four straight.

And then there is the part that is harder to sit with, because it means the argument I was making was too small.

It would not have saved this game.

### Where it was actually lost

Miami outscored Atlanta seventy to fifty-two in the paint. They out-rebounded them fifty-two to forty, including twelve offensive rebounds to Atlanta's nine. Giannis Antetokounmpo had eighteen rebounds by himself.

Ball pressure does not operate in either of those places. You cannot deflect a rebound. You cannot force a turnover on a layup that has already gone in. The eighteen-point gap in the paint and the twelve-rebound gap on the glass are the entire margin of this game and then some, and both of them were decided by bodies, not hands.

The free-throw line said the same thing in a different accent. On Monday I counted Jalen Johnson taking twelve of Atlanta's twenty-one free throws while the other twelve men who dressed took nine between them. Wednesday the whole team attempted fourteen. Miami attempted twenty-three. Atlanta committed twenty-four fouls; Miami committed seventeen.

A team that fouls more often and gets to the line less often is losing a physical argument, and it is the same argument the paint number is making.

### What makes it strange

Atlanta shot forty-eight percent. They made sixteen three-pointers to Miami's eleven and shot a better percentage doing it, forty-two to thirty-eight. Both teams attempted exactly ninety-six shots from the floor.

Atlanta won the part of basketball that everybody has spent a decade saying is the part that matters, and lost by twelve.

The most efficient Atlanta player on the floor was nineteen years old. Kingston Flemings, five games into a professional career, scored twenty-three points on nine-of-twelve shooting in twenty-eight minutes. Nickeil Alexander-Walker also had twenty-three, on eighteen shots. Jalen Johnson had eleven assists and finished minus twenty-three, the worst mark of anyone who played.

There is no excuse in the box score and I looked for one. This was not a back-to-back — Atlanta played Monday in Houston and had Tuesday off, and Miami had the exact same Monday-game-Tuesday-off week. Nobody in the rotation was unavailable.

### Five games

I wrote on Monday that four games is not a verdict and that I would remember it. Five games is not a verdict either, and I am going to remember it again, because the temptation after a night like this is to decide what this team is and then spend November collecting evidence for it.

What I will say is narrower. This roster can shoot. And across three straight losses now — by seven, then ten, then twelve — Atlanta have been out-rebounded every time, and have gone to the free-throw line fewer times than the opponent every time. Twenty-one to twenty-three against Houston on Saturday. Twenty-one to thirty-two in Houston on Monday. Fourteen to twenty-three on Wednesday.

That is the same sentence three different ways, and it is not a shooting sentence.

Cleveland come in Thursday at eight, 3-1, on the same floor where the Dream play Game 6 of the Finals at half past twelve. Two games, one building, seven and a half hours apart.

Atlanta have one more chance this week to look like a team that is hard to play against in its own gym.