ATLANTA – There was a moment Sunday evening, as Al Horford's right pinky bent at an angle fingers are not supposed to bend and he made an immediate exit from the Philips Arena floor to the locker room, that a month's worth of nervousness about the physical state of the Atlanta Hawks was reaching worst-case scenario status.
While Horford was getting his dislocated finger X-rayed and taped up early in the fourth quarter, Atlanta's other frontcourt cornerstone Paul Millsap was laboring through one of his worst games of the season, the culmination of disrupted rhythm and right shoulder discomfort that traces back to an April 4 injury.