Hawks hold off Heat, Bucks thrash Bulls in NBA playoffs

The Hawks cut the deficit in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series to 2-1. The reigning NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks grabbed a 2-1 series lead with a 111-81 rout of the Chicago Bulls, and the Phoenix Suns took a 2-1 series lead with a 114-111 victory over the Pelicans in New Orleans. In Atlanta, PJ Tucker's three-pointer with less than a minute to play had put the Heat up 110-109 as the clash in Atlanta came down to the frantic final minutes.

With 5.5 seconds remaining Young drove the lane and floated in the basket that proved the difference, with Miami star Jimmy Butler watching his contested three-point effort at the buzzer bounce off the rim. "I just wanted to try to get to the basket," said Young, who scored 24 points to lead six Hawks players in double figures. "I knew there was only 10 seconds left...

I didn't want to settle for a three. So I tried to get all the way to the rim and either get a foul or a layup." The top-seeded Heat had won the first two games of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference series at home. Their chances of taking a 3-0 stranglehold looked good when a 21-0 scoring run in the third quarter saw them take an 84-68 lead in a game that was delayed more than half an hour after a suspicious package was found outside the Hawks' arena before the game.

But the Hawks, no doubt well aware that no NBA team has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series, closed the third on a 9-1 scoring run. Young's three-pointer knotted the score at 104-104 with 2:26 remaining and it was a dogfight from there. Bogdan Bogdanovic scored 18 points off the bench for Atlanta.