What Quin Snyder says Hawks needs to do at ‘higher level’ to break losing streak

The Atlanta Hawks were once in the top half of the league in defensive rating, and the eye test showed it. They weren’t allowing easy shots, they were getting back in transition, and they were holding their opponents to low-scoring nights. In the month of December, any resemblance to what their defense was slowly went away, and it may have reached its lowest point in the past two weeks.

The Hawks are 18th in defensive rating now, but over the past five games, they’ve allowed each of their opponents to score over 125 points. That is not the recipe for winning, and that’s why they’ve lost those five games as well.

Every loss is not created the same, but head coach Quin Snyder even knows the one common denominator in all of the losses the Hawks have suffered recently.

“Defensively, we haven’t defended on a level that we need to put ourselves in a position to win,” Snyder told Clutch Points. “Actually, we have been in a position where we might have won if we had defended at a higher level. That encompasses a lot of things. It’s not one thing.

“There’s some consistent things. We just need to be better across the board. If we were doing that, and we had lost a few in a row, I think that would feel different. It would probably be something else we need to do better.”

The Hawks allowed the Chicago Bulls to score 152 points in regulation a few games ago, and if they had gotten just one or two more stops, they may have won. The offense hasn’t been much of a problem, and if they can get the defensive side of the ball at the same level, things could look a bit different.

“Teams are putting too many points on the board for us… It’s not our offense that’s too much of a problem,” Trae Young said after their loss against the Miami Heat. “We had a lot of turnovers, but the last few games weren’t necessarily our offense, it’s been our defense, and tonight was a little bit more of both.”

Though the Hawks have some good individual defenders on the team, it takes a collective group effort to see some real change on the defensive end. If things don’t change there, it could be a good chance that their losing streak continues.

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