Alex Len dominating = big Hawks lead.
Alex Len not dominating = Hawks lose again.
The clear and obvious solution to this problem is to set things up so that Alex Len is always dominating. However, that’s a clear and obvious solution only until you try to do anything other than say it, because Len is the type of player who needs a very specific set of circumstances to dominate. He’s not going to just dominate by himself, unless he goes back and plays in his domestic league in The Ukraine. He would score 50 against every team except the one with Joel Bolomboy on it.
Len had a really great first half of this one, where he hit some threes (which he used to hit all the time but now rarely does), got some easy slams courtesy of Trae Young (who else?), and fought on the glass for some tip-ins. But those things weren’t sustainable, he slowed down, and the Nets turned a big deficit into a fairly comfortable win.
The Hawks just keep losing, Young can score as many points as he wants, it doesn’t matter. When even Len scoring an unexpected 23 points, which is 23 points more than you can reasonably expect he’ll score, results in a 10-point loss, there are some issues. But that’s a topic for another description.