Comatose for 36 minutes, the Atlanta Hawks opened their eyes, stretched their arms, reorganized their hearts and awoke from a deep, deep sleep that at one point had them trailing by 21 points. Mike Scott, Kent Bazemore, Dennis Schroder, Mike Muscala, Shelvin Mack shook off the oppressive apathy of the rest of their teammates and met the moment in a brilliantly executed fourth quarter.
Things great and small sometimes happen when you least expect it, when you have already written the end of the story. Earlier when the Hawks inflicted their own brand of cruelty upon us, apathy, not heroism, was the theme of the day.