Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer was back at work Tuesday to prepare the Hawks for the evening matchup against the Celtics. Budenholzer missed Monday's practice due to an illness. The coach reported at all 13 players are healthy and available.
Celtics coach Brad Stevens had a couple of interesting things to say about facing the Hawks.
On their recent play: "They are a very good scoring team who has played its best defense within the last week. They present a lot of challenges. They are fully healthy, which they never seemed like they were last year. It's a tough team to play against."
On Kyle Korver: "One of the things about Korver that is really unbelievable is that he averages 13 points a game. But you go into the game and you have to treat him like he averages 30 or else it could be 30. That is where he presents a whole lot of challenges. He presents challenges in his cuts, how much attention you give him off the cuts, how much he opens up for everybody else."
For the Hawks, Celtics' Rajon Rondo was on the mind of Budenholzer.
On stopping the Celtics point guard: "Having gone against him for so many years, there are probably lots of different ways you can play him or you consider to play him and he can destroy every one of them. To watch how he can run an offense and orchestrate an offense, get guys shots and get assists and get to the paint. He is a very, very unique point guard. Hopefully tonight we will make it a little bit difficult on him. You are always trying to figure out ways. Like I said, it doesn't seem like any of them really work."
I had planned to some/all of those quotes in the Sunday notes column but they were too good to hold on to for a few days.
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