In what was the largest margin of victory in franchise history, the Atlanta Hawks destroyed the Charlotte Hornets by 47 points on Friday night and moved to 2-0 this season.
Everything went the Hawks' way on Friday night. They played excellent defense from start to finish, forced 25 turnovers, and made 18 three-pointers to Charlotte's 12. It is early in the season, but the Hawks have already banked two important road wins against divisional opponents.
Here are the biggest winners and losers from tonight.
Winner: Dyson Daniels
I say consistently that Dyson Daniels might be the most underrated player in the entire NBA and Friday night showed why. Daniels was fantastic in the Hawks win over Hornets, nearly getting a triple-double with steals.
Daniels did what he does on a nightly basis and that is make winning basketball plays. He finished the game with 11 points, nine rebounds, seven steals, and four assists, while also shooting 5-for-10 from the field.
He is going to be tested a lot more tonight with the Houston Rockets in town, but he has gotten off to a great start.
Winner: Aaron Wiggins
The Atlanta Hawks might have their first contender to win not only the Most Improved Player Award, but Aaron Wiggins could vault himself into 6th Man of the Year conversations.
He was impressive in the win over Orlando and he continued his strong play on Friday night against the Hornets. Wiggins has been valuable as another ball-handler and three point shooter, not to mention a versatile defender. He finished the game on Friday with 19 points on 7-for-9 shooting from the field (3-for-5 from three).
Wiggins is very important for the Hawks ceiling this season and it is hard to imagine a better start for the former Thunder player.
Winner: Kingston Flemings
Flemings is not putting up "wow" stats just yet, but his ability to play hard on defense, find the open man on offense, and rebound the ball well against the Hornets.
Again, five points, eight assists, and six rebounds is not going to blow anyone away, but if you watch closely, you can see the kind of impact that Flemings has on this second unit and I think the scoring is going to catch up as the season goes on. Flemings has a role right now and is excelling at it early in his career, but tonight's matchup against the Rockets is going to be his toughest to date.
Loser: CJ McCollum
For the sake of the article, I had to pick at least one loser and in picking McCollum, I am nitpicking quite a bit and this is probably a stretch.
While the Hawks won this game by 47 points, McCollum did the least of any of the starters to get them to that place. He did score 11 points in the first quarter, but ended up with only 13 points for the game and shot 4-for-10 from the floor and 2-for7 from three. He only played a little over 21 minutes, but was outplayed by Wiggins once again, but that is not a bad thing.
Again, when you have to find a loser in a 47-point win, it looks something like this.
Winner: Corey Kispert
I did not think that I would be labeling Kispert as a winner when the game started, but his performance tonight is worth mentioning.
Kispert was actually the second leading scorer off the bench behind Wiggins, finishing with 11 points and shooting 3-for-4 from three. I don't think he is going to be a part of the main rotation anytime soon, but he stepped up when he got his chance tonight and deserves praise.
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