Daniels’ safe hands secure a late win over the Kings, 109-108

The Hawks got some good health updates — plus a late-breaking bad one. Kobe Bufkin appeared for the first time this season and Bogdan Bogdanovic returned after missing all but the opening game.

But a late scratch to Jalen Johnson moved Garrison Mathews into the starting lineup for this matchup with the Kings.

Zaccharie Risacher got the party started with nine early points, and the Hawks as a group jumped out to a 17-6 lead behind threes from Risacher and Dyson Daniels.

They put together another mini-run to push the lead to 22-6, but the team still needed to lock in the rest of the way to avoid a repeat of the game in Portland yesterday.

And on cue, a 13-3 run by Sacramento immediately cut the big early lead.

Still, the Hawks welcomed the return of Kobe Bufkin and ‘Bogi’ late in the first quarter.

But six straight threes from the Kings knotted the game at 30-30, later revised to 31-30 Kings — though a De’Andre Hunter follower gave the Hawks the edge after one quarter, 32-31.

Then the Kings, and Keon Ellis in particular, couldn’t miss deep, though slack finishes from the Hawks certainly had an effect. Atlanta surrounded an absolute avalanche of threes from the Kings, and it turned a 16-point lead into an 11-point deficit and climbed with 7:20 minutes in the second quarter.

Atlanta worked to stay in the game after the shooting attack, and when the starters plus Hunter came back, they created some havoc defensively and were able to score against scrambled defenses.

The Hawks regained the lead to 54-51 with four minutes left in the half. From there, they hung in there and tightened the screws on the defense.

At halftime, the Hawks were fortunately down by just two points, 66-64. De’Andre Hunter top scored for the Hawks with 13 points off the bench. Risacher added 11 points on 3-for-7 (43%) shooting from the field.

In the third quarter, Ellis picked up where he left off, hitting his seventh, eighth and ninth threes of the game to give the Kings an 85-77 lead. The only hope Atlanta had was to fight fire with fire — to knock down threes to give themselves a chance in a shootout.

Hunter did his best to help the cause with a pair of deep buckets in the period.

After three quarters, the Hawks found themselves down 93-89.

After a fluid game of high-octane basketball, the game slowed down sharply in the fourth quarter. It was a choppy affair with several offensive errors on screens and loose balls. The stop-and-start nature benefited the Hawks as they were able to get stops as well as draw Keegan Murray’s sixth foul early in the period.

A cut finish by Risacher off a feed from Trae Young tied the game at 96-96 midway through the final quarter.

But the Hawks calmly put out most of the fires on defense down the stretch, including creating a 5-on-4 from a trailing De’Aaron Fox that hit the floor at the post that ended in another Hunter triple.

With a 106-101 lead, the Hawks gave up a pair of trips to the line for Ellis, who promptly cut the lead to two. But Atlanta was able to get around the Kings defense and get the ball in the lane for good results on a pair of possessions with less than three minutes remaining.

At 109-108, there was a frantic set of final possessions. First, Atlanta had a couple of chances to increase the lead. But after a Hunter desperation three from the corner clinked off the rim, the ball ended up in De’Aaron Fox’s hands.

Dyson Daniels was able to bottle him up (despite perhaps stepping out of bounds) and secure the ball as time expired, clinching a 109-108 Hawks victory.

Hunter finished with 24 points and Young had a brilliant game, distributing the ball with 19 assists to just five turnovers.

The win moves Atlanta to 7-8 on the season and they next play the resurgent Warriors late Wednesday.