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The Atlanta Hawks opened the 2025-26 season like they closed the 2024-25 season, with a loss. The Hawks fell to the Toronto Raptors, 138-118, in front of a sellout crowd of 17,800 fans.
With five minutes remaining in the game and the Hawks behind by 25 points, that sellout crowd began to start heading towards the exit. The NBA season is a marathon and not a sprint, so Wednesday night’s loss shouldn’t be seen as a sign for the rest of the season. That said, it was as bad a start as one could imagine for a team projected to be better than last season.
Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
The Hawks took a 2-0 lead and never led the game again. Toronto guard RJ Barrett (game-high 25 points) and forward Scottie Barnes (22 points, six rebounds, and nine assists), arguably the team’s best players, along with veteran forward Brandon Ingram (16 points, nine rebounds), took charge of the game from the beginning. Atlanta couldn’t do anything to stop them.
The Raptors outrebounded the Hawks by 20 (54-34) and scored 86 of their points in the paint. Toronto is a big team, but a 20-rebound advantage felt more like the Hawks’ lack of effort than the Raptors’ ability. After the game, Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said his team would have to do better going forward.
“It’s hard to win games like that,” Snyder said. “There are a lot of things we need to clean up, and that’s stating the obvious.”
Snyder, Hawks guard Trae Young (5-14 from the floor, 22 points), and forward Jalen Johnson (team-high eight assists, 20 points, and seven rebounds) all said the loss was just one of 82 games and shouldn’t be a sign of the times in Hawks land.
“Our team is going to be right, trust me,” Young said.
Johnson, back on the court after a season-ending injury last season, was more straightforward about the loss. “We just got to be better,” he said.
Johnson couldn’t have played much better. He ran the floor, led the team with seven rebounds, along with first-year Hawk Kristaps Porzingis (20 points), and did everything he could.
The two bench players brought in to help the Hawks’ depth, Nickeil Alexander-Walker (2-15 for 10 points) and Luke Kennard (1-5 from three-point land), weren’t much help tonight, but will need to be better if Atlanta is going to make the postseason without the help of a play-in game for the first time in years.
Bright spot: Zaccharie Risacher scored 16 points and looked comfortable being a part of the Hawks’ offense. During his rookie season last year, he tended to shy away from the ball. Risacher, the runner-up for Rookie of the Year, took 13 shots, six of which were from behind the three-point line.
“He’s finding a good balance. You saw him attack the rim in transition,” Snyder said of Risacher. “He’s shooting the ball with confidence, and we need him to keep doing that.”
What’s next: The Hawks will travel south to Orlando to play a much-improved Magic squad on Friday, before returning to State Farm Arena to host the reigning NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night.
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Donnell Suggs
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