Hawks 123-116 Spurs: down 19 after one, the bench that got wrecked Monday actually showed up in San Antonio

For one quarter at the Frost Bank Center, it looked like Thursday was going to be Monday all over again. The Hawks spotted San Antonio a 39-20 first quarter, Victor Wembanyama's jumper falling and Dylan Harper running the three-guard show, and the rebuild's biggest open question — the bench — was getting cooked on the road. Then the exact unit that got wrecked in the opener came back with C.J. McCollum and Aaron Wiggins alongside it and outscored the Spurs 103-77 over the final three quarters to win 123-116. The Hawks are 1-1 in the preseason, and the leaky second unit just answered, at least for one night.

Getting McCollum and Wiggins back changed everything

Monday, the second group played without them and it showed: no shooting, no spacing, a 132-123 leaky mess. Thursday both vets were out of the questionable column and back in the rotation, and the difference was the whole ballgame. McCollum's pull-up threes and Wiggins' catches-and-releases gave the reserves a floor they simply didn't have against Memphis. The box score held the starters up, but the group that won this one was the one everybody was worried about.

The comeback was a real one, not a garbage-time mirage

Trailing 19 after one, the Hawks didn't chip — they flipped the game in the second, 42-30, then ground out the third and fourth quarters while the Spurs went to their depth. Sure, San Antonio sat its starters down the stretch and Wembanyama's run was closer than the final margin felt. But the playoff-tested Spurs jumping to a 19-point lead and then losing to Atlanta's deep rotation is the kind of night a rebuild wants to see more of, even in October.

What Thursday actually told us

Flemings got real run again and didn't look lost. The defense-first identity held up on a road floor against length, which was the whole point of shipping out Buddy Hield for Dorian Finney-Smith and building this roster around Lu Dort's era. It's one early-October win against a half-rested Spurs team — hold the parade. But the thing that needed fixing after Monday, the bench bleeding points, at least held the line in San Antonio.

Bird Gang bottom line

Nobody's framing a preseason win as proof of anything, least of all against a Spurs team that sat its stars down the stretch. The read is simpler: the deep rotation got wrecked Monday, and Thursday it won the game in a road arena with the same guys in it. Next up is Indiana on Saturday, then Orlando kicks the real thing off Oct. 21. If the bench keeps playing like it did in San Antonio, this Dort-era roster is a lot more interesting than the one that opened camp.

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