Last night, your Los Angeles Lakers extended their win-streak to a season-most four games in a 130-114 blowout vanquishing of the visiting Atlanta Hawks. On NBA Twitter, fans and pundits alike registered their dismay at the Hawks’ lackluster night.
Though viewers may have been bummed, Lakers fans would probably be very happy for their team to play the Hawks every night of the year. Even ahead of the game, fans were hoping a Lakers victory could galvanize Hawks ownership into reassessing the work of Atlanta head coach Nate McMillan:
NBA fans seemed to be particularly upset with Nate McMillan’s somewhat confounding decision making, as the Hawks struggled to contain LA’s fastbreak attack, especially in the game’s first half (LA got out to a 70-49 start).
Several Twitter hoop heads wondered if the clock was ticking on McMillan’s job security in the days (and hours) to come:
This was not an uncommon refrain:
Others were a bit more generous with the timeline, but the ultimate thesis was the same:
Fans weren’t the only folks tweeting their frustration with McMillan’s approach last night.
Longtime Boston Celtics center Kendrick Nunn, also a former teammate of both LeBron James and Russell Westbrook, has enjoyed an excellent second career as an ESPN commentator. Even he registered his disappointment with McMillan:
CBS Sports reporter Sam Quinn noted that the team thrived when McMillan took over halfway through the 2020-21 NBA season on an interim basis and totally turned the team around after original head coach Lloyd Pierce was fired.
Those Hawks finished as the fifth seed in the East and marched all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they would fall in six games to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks (where Darvin Ham was an assistant coach at the time). Quinn also added that, even given that turnaround, McMillan appears to have dropped the ball in how he has handled the team’s offense this season:
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