NBA playoffs scores 2015: The Hawks, not their system, failed

All season, we talked about how the Atlanta Hawks' style could hold up in the regular season. No superstar, no isolation scorer. Just smart, clean, clever basketball. Atlanta showed that it didn't overpower opponents, but outworked them. At the end of a game, the Hawks win because they just flat out played better.

Losing Game 1 and 2 at home in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers missing Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving won't garner any support for that type of unselfish play, and that's a damn shame. It's not the style that has failed the Hawks, but the Hawks themselves.

But injuries have hurt them hard. DeMarre Carroll's knee injury in Game 1 that left him slow and hampered on Friday was par the course for Atlanta's roster. Al Horford isn't quite right with a bothersome knee and Kyle Korver left Game 2 with an ankle sprain.

With an entire series to plan for the Hawks, it's easier for defenses to slow them down. Korver was smothered by the Brooklyn Nets in the first round and the Washington Wizards and Cavaliers have followed suit, sticking to him with adhesives and preventing his floor-bending jump shot from changing games the way it did in the regular season.

The bench isn't good enough, either. Pero Antic, Mike Scott and Kent Bazemore are all great players to fill out a roster, but relying on them for the playoffs isn't what Atlanta needs. They miss Thabo Sefolosha, who is out for the year with a broken leg suffered in an incident with the NYPD.

If the Hawks were healthy, if their bench was deeper, if they were just playing a little bit better, they could have flipped the table on Cleveland and be two games away from advancing from the NBA Finals. The reason they're not has nothing to do with a lack of a star or their love of jump shots. They just haven't been good enough.

Once again, just like 2007, it's LeBron in Cleveland leading a bunch of guys to a brutal Finals death. We all know this isn't exactly the Cavaliers' fault. They had Irving and brought in Love to give James two players better than anyone he ever suited up with during his original term in Cleveland. They saved a season by orchestrating masterful midseason maneuvers for Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith and Timofey Mozgov, all three of which have been great in these playoffs. (Not to mention jettisoning Dion Waiters, a move that was probably equally important but we've all but forgotten at this point.) With Love going down in the first round and Irving's knee tendinitis hampering him the last couple of rounds and finally causing him to miss a game, it's injuries to blame for James being left all alone. But still, here he is again, two wins away from the Finals.

Still, it's just Game 2 -- can the Hawks make this a series? A lot of it depends on Irving's health. Although they couldn't capitalize on Friday, Atlanta should remember who killed them: James Jones, Matthew Dellavedova, Tristan Thompson. Cleveland has an opportunistic bench that always seems to offer up a big role player performance when the Cavaliers need it, but if Irving can't go again or if he's highly ineffective in Game 3, it's asking a lot of the bench to do it again. Atlanta looked dead in Game 2, but we've seen stranger comebacks. Including in the last round with the Houston Rockets.