If the NBA insists on having teams within in its 30-squad ranks that just straight-up suck, it definitely helps for them to be the high-scoring variety of suck. The Hawks, who are one of the very worst teams in the league, just dropped 152 points on the hardly-any-better Wizards, who scored 133. 152 somehow isn’t the most any team has scored this year (who could ever forget the Rockets/’Zards 159-158 regulation game, that still blows my mind), but it’s seriously a ton of points. Only about 10 teams this decade have scored so many points in a game, regulation or otherwise.
One of the reasons that the Hawks scored so many points becomes obvious very quickly when watching this video: Isaiah Thomas was on the court for the ‘Zards. There is no one he can guard in the NBA, which by definition includes everyone on the Hawks roster. Washington tried putting him on De’Andre Hunter, which is about the best they could do. Hunter isn’t quite skilled enough or big enough to for sure be able to score on him every time. Nevertheless, he scored on him quite a bit, basically padding his stats whenever he got the chance.
So it is with that said that I have to sadly adorn this performance with an asterisk. “De’Andre Hunter 25 Points* Full Highlights (1/26/2020) *Primary defender was often Isaiah Thomas”. I really hate to do it, but this isn’t a normal 25-point game. And it wasn’t just Thomas. The whole ‘Zards squad doesn’t really want to D up, making any statistical feat performed against them nearly worthless.