Al Horford sat at his locker, swollen right hand and all, after an impressive Atlanta Hawks win.
"It's nice to watch when we're sharing the ball, different guys are getting involved," Horford told the AP. "When we play like that, it seems like we're at our best."
Horford lead five Atlanta players in to double figures with 18 points and 12 boards to post the Hawks to a 95-80 win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night at the Bradley Center. Joe Johnson had 15 and Marvin Williams and Jamal Crawford had 14 each for Atlanta, which snapped a road skid at five.
The question is at what cost did this Atlanta victory come? Center/forward Al Horford has been playing through a right hand injury. It swelled up after the game. X-Rays were negative, but he will undergo an MRI on Tuesday.
"I know I look fine out there but it's tough," Horford told the AJC's Mike Cunningham. "When I stop playing it feels OK but as soon as I get back out there it's hurting."
Atlanta won yesterday because they just didn't stop. They kept shooting and sharing the basketball and the ball continued to go in.
The Hawks took a 29-18 lead through one period and extended the lead to 15 at the break. The Bucks cut the lead to 69-62 late in the third on John Salmons' bucket, but Joe Johnson and Marvin Williams pushed the lead back to double-digits to start the fourth with a pair of buckets.
The Hawks, who shot a blistering 50.7-percent from the field in this one never looked back.
Josh Smith was booed just about every time he touched the basketball in Milwaukee as Bucks fans remembered the disparaging remarks he made about Laverne & Shirley's town during the postseason. That didn't matter much for Smith, who finished with 13 points.
Salmons had a team-leading 18 points for Milwaukee, which fell to 0-6 when allowing an opponent to shoot 50-percent or better from the field.