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The Hawks are now up 2-0 in the series. That is a numerical fact. The Hawks are still heavy favorites to advance to the Eastern Conference finals. That is a logical conclusion based on the fact they need to beat Brooklyn just two more times and then likely the Washington Wizards, another team they handled during the regular season. Still, it is not hard to see that the playoffs have been different – even weird – for Atlanta so far. The beautiful offensive flow from the regular season isn't quite there. A bench that has been so productive all season is struggling to churn out baskets. Shots that normally go down are spinning out. A team that was almost automatic when it got a 10-point lead at any point from Oct. 29 to April 15, losing just a handful of times all season, has been in very real danger of blowing double-digit leads the past two fourth quarters. And yet, for anyone to draw big conclusions about Atlanta at this juncture would be to overlook the bottom line. Even though the Hawks haven't played to the standard they set in the regular season, they are still right on course to get through this series without too much stress and have plenty of room to improve.

"It's what you expect in the playoffs," Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said. "They're a very good team. They kept coming back and there were big possessions late in the game, and we feel fortunate we made just enough plays and got just enough stops. I think defensively we got a little bit better tonight, but we need to play better going forward and play better for longer stretches." Atlanta got to a franchise record 60-22 by doing one of two things night in and night out. If the Hawks didn't dominate someone from start-to-finish, they usually took control of a game with one killer stretch where their offense and defense fed off each other and opposing teams just got buried under the pressure of trying to guard all that ball movement backed up by waves and waves of shooters. So for Atlanta to make just 43% of its field goals in Game 1, then dip to 38.9% in Game 2 is unusual. It's disconcerting. It's not what the Hawks are supposed to do. "We had a lot of good looks," said guard Kyle Korver, who scored 17 points. "I thought we had a couple stretches where we got a little stagnant and too 1-on-1, but overall we just didn't shoot the ball that well for awhile." The Hawks' most stagnant stretch occurred in the second quarter when they missed nine straight shots and briefly fell behind 43-40, which was also right about the time the organization officially announced that an agreement had been reached to sell the team to a group led by Los Angeles-based billionaire Tony Ressler. At any other moment, this would have been big news in Atlanta, an organization that for years has dealt with ownership strife through warring factions of a group called, ironically, the "Atlanta Spirit." The Hawks' record this year has largely served as cover for much of that ugliness, which came spilling out to some degree when a 2012 e-mail with inappropriate, racially-charged sentiments from owner Bruce Levenson were discovered during an NBA investigation. General manager Danny Ferry, who put together this roster, has also been in limbo since comments from a scouting report about Luol Deng during a conference call with owners were made public. The Hawks weren't really interested in talking about the looming ownership change before Game 2, which is understandable. Budenholzer essentially cut off any questions about it, saying he was aware of the reports but that all the focus should be on the playoffs.