Jalen Johnson will not play Monday night, leaving the Hawks without one of their key pieces when they meet the Pacers at 8:10 p.m. ET in Indianapolis. He had been questionable with a left ankle sprain before the team ruled him out for the game.
That change matters because Hawks Vs Pacers arrives with both sides trying to steady themselves after rough losses. Indiana has dropped five of seven and is also dealing with injuries, while Atlanta comes in after a 121-99 loss at New Orleans on Halloween night.
Johnson’s absence strips away a forward who gives Atlanta size, scoring and another ballhandler in a matchup where those things matter. The Hawks already leaned on CJ McCollum for a team-high 14 points against New Orleans, but they still shot 38.5 percent, went 8-for-46 from 3-point range and turned it over 19 times. Seven Atlanta players reached double figures, yet the game still slipped away early after New Orleans opened with a 35-18 first quarter.
Indiana has its own problems. The Pacers lost 98-90 to the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday in their lowest-scoring performance of the season, shot 40 percent and were held to 40 first-half points. No Pacers player had more than six rebounds in that game, and the team was outrebounded 43-37, a reminder that the injury talk around Indiana is more than background noise.
The matchup also carries recent history. The Pacers snapped the Hawks’ four-game win streak in the series in the most recent meeting on Jan. 31, so Atlanta is trying to answer a familiar problem without Johnson available. With both teams arriving short-handed, the game in Indianapolis may come down less to reputation than to which rotation can absorb the absence better.
The next answer belongs on the floor. Atlanta now has to replace Johnson’s role on the fly, and Monday night will show whether the Hawks can do it against a Pacers group that has spent the week trying to survive its own injuries.
