by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Golden State Warriors who have had not very many problems handling opponents thus far this season was playing a team that played them evenly the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night and this was no second rate team. The Hawks might be the only NBA team that is in the same stratosphere as the Warriors in terms of their record. Were talking about the two best teams in the NBA and the Hawks had the home court advantage on Friday in addition to having the Warriors just flown cross country with very little sleep to Atlanta for the Hawks 124-116 win.

The Hawks just had a slight advantage in that respect this wasn’t exactly a blow out it was a game that was fairly close for most of the way. The Hawks pulled away a little bit I in the fourth quarter and the Hawks were ridiculously hot from outside they were hitting everything and hitting every three pointer it didn’t seem they could miss at all.

Atlanta’s offensive design can get those open three pointers and even by the Hawks standards they were just hitting everything and it didn’t seem like the Hawks missed anything when they had a shot. When you have a offense to give you open looks your going to get a better than average three point percentage but the Hawks were well over 50 percent which is not what teams normally have.

Part of it was the W’s were a little tired from the cross country flight maybe they were a step slower on Friday. Whatever the case maybe it was a very good game definitely worthy of the hype. You had two of the best teams in the NBA, this game looked like it could have went the Warriors way they were playing very well getting the lead but the Hawks fought back in the second half.

It was a great game you tip your hat to the Hawks, the Warriors are going to face them again in Oracle in March and we’ll see what happens in that match up. Although the Hawks (42-9 .824) had a slightly better percentage than the Warriors (39-9 .813) the record doesn’t make a difference and you could look at the records and split them up anyway you want.

You could say the Warriors have the better winning percentage and the Hawks have the better record in terms of overall wins. The differences are really teeny tiny the difference are minot, there aren’t many differences between these two teams, they play very similar style of basketball and their both coached by guys Warriors Steve Kerr and the Hawks Mike Budenholzer who have roots in San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich’s offense. The Warriors and Hawks meet again on March 16th in Oakland.

David does Warriors commentary and podcast each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com Dave talks more Warriors and Hawks below in his podcast