Quin Snyder gets honest on how tough it is to stop Luka Doncic

Rowland asked “You kind of referred to it there, but it seemed like there was a little bit more of the blitzing, trapping coming out at halftime after he had the big first half. What’s sort of the messaging? Is it just trying to make somebody else beat you?”

“Yeah, that was happening in the first half too,” Snyder said. “It just wasn’t, we weren’t executing it very well. And, you know, when we did trap without Adam Sands, you know, someone had to rotate it. We had the one time we trapped him and Trae came up with the steal. But there were, you know, we were, we did a bunch of different things. Sometimes, you know, You know, when you’re trying to do too much, even. But that, I thought the game required that.

He continued his explanation. “You know, anybody that’s going like that, you’re, you know, you’re gonna try to find something that can get him off balance. And sometimes change is good in the second half. As I said, we, we, we tried to keep Sadiq on him early and then switch JJ on to him late. And I thought our execution was better in some of those situations. You know, it’s still the ball. There are little things that, like I said, you almost have to be perfect in those situations to try to force someone else, you know, you want, trying to get Josh Green to shoot a three or Hardaway to shoot a three. Well, Josh Green, I don’t know what he was for a three, but he made him two, so, a little bit of pick your poison, but at that point, obviously, the way that Luka was going.”

Luka’s 73-point outburst appears to reflect the Hawks’ defensive challenges this season. They have had several games in which they surrendered high point totals, including yielding 157 points to Indiana, 138 to Oklahoma City, 132 to Philadelphia, 134 to the Warriors, and 148 to the Mavericks on Friday.

If the Hawks want to salvage what’s left of the season they must find a way to improve their defensive output to match their high-powered offense.