Tonight at 6pm, right around the time your local news anchors are discussing depressing and heartbreaking stories, the Washington Wizards and the Atlanta Hawks will be playing Game 5 of their first round series, live and direct from the Verizon Center.
Since Game 4, Markieff Morris hasn’t called Paul Millsap a crybaby, and Millsap hasn’t thrown a go-back-to-your-hotel directive at Morris. They say a playoff series doesn’t truly start until a road team wins, but the lack of chatter from these teams headed into Game 5, shows that both teams realize exactly what’s at stake. A win tonight by the Hawks would mean they’d won three straight games over the favored Wizards, and it would put them in the proverbial driver’s seat before Friday night’s game in Atlanta (that game starts at the “normal” time of 7:30 by the way).