Hawks bury Charlotte with pressure, passing and a 47-point margin

By Rodney Holloway

Recap & analysis · Hawks · October 26, 2026

Atlanta didn’t need one scorer to overwhelm Charlotte. It needed the Hornets to keep losing the ball—and its own players to keep sharing it. The Hawks won 128–81 on October 23 with 37 assists and 17 steals.

Dyson Daniels supplied seven of those steals, along with 11 points, nine rebounds and four assists. That combination is valuable for a reason beyond the highlight: a takeaway ends the opponent’s chance before a shot and can let Atlanta attack before the defense is organized.

Jalen Johnson finished with 19 points, seven rebounds and eight assists. His box score and Daniels’ show two different ways of connecting possessions. Johnson helped create baskets; Daniels repeatedly took Charlotte out of its offense.

The shooting gave that activity a finish. Atlanta made 48 of 95 shots and 18 of 45 threes. The latter is exactly 40 percent, calculated from total makes and attempts. Charlotte went 11-for-51 from outside.

All five Hawks starters scored in double figures. Onyeka Okongwu had 10 points, CJ McCollum 13 and Nickeil Alexander-Walker 14 alongside Johnson and Daniels. The offense did not have to funnel every possession toward a single scorer.

The 47-point final margin makes the night easy to summarize and harder to use as a forecast. Once a game opens up that far, rotations, matchups and late possessions can differ sharply from a close game. The score describes the win; it does not establish Atlanta’s normal level.

The more useful standard is the work that produced it: active hands, an available next pass and enough players willing to finish the play. Those are habits the Hawks can try to carry into tighter games, when the cushion disappears and every empty trip has a greater cost.

By the numbers

Dyson Daniels at an Atlanta Hawks meet-and-greet, January 25, 2025. Archive portrait, not game action. Photo: 404×404. Image source. CC BY 4.0; resized and displayed with crop