On Thursday night, the Atlanta Hawks squared off against the San Antonio Spurs in a clash between two teams missing their respective best players, Trae Young and Victor Wembanyama. In the end, it was the home team Spurs that emerged with the win, 135-126, sending the Hawks to 9-7 on the season.
It remains admirable how the Hawks have been managing to survive even without the presence of their best ballhandler and playmaker. The likes of Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker have been stepping up to the challenge, bearing the responsibility of leading the offense.
But amid Young's injury, an important Hawks player in Kristaps Porzingis has missed some time as well due to some right knee soreness. Nonetheless, Porzingis was active on Thursday and put up 16 points on 7-10 shooting from the field. And in so doing, he became the fastest 7-footer in terms of games played to score 10,000 points and make 900 three-pointers, surpassing Karl-Anthony Towns, as per Hawks PR on X (formerly Twitter).
Towns needed 545 games to accomplish the aforementioned feat, while Porzingis only needed 511 games to do so. This is not a huge surprise considering the three-point shot is a bigger part of Porzingis' shot diet than it is for Towns, although it took Porzingis much longer than Towns to reach those numbers since he's encountered way more injury problems over his career than the New York Knicks star ever has.
Kristaps Porzingis, Hawks run out of steam against the Spurs
The Hawks went down by double digits yet again similar to how they've done so over their past two games (against the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons). Like in those games, they stormed back yet again in the fourth. But like in the Pistons contest, they did not have enough in the end, as the Spurs pulled away and ended up winning by nine even though Nickeil Alexander-Walker popped off for 38 points on eight made triples.
The Hawks have at least been playing good basketball amid Young's injury. They will look to return to winning ways on Saturday when they face the floundering New Orleans Pelicans.
