Hawks 138, Wizards 124

<p>On the day the NBA approved their sale, the Atlanta Hawks seemed bent on showing their new owners it was a good investment.</p><p>The Washington Wizards, on the other hand, seem to reach a new low with each passing game.</p><p>Five Atlanta players topped 20 points for the first time in 36 years, a feat last accomplished in the NBA 11 years ago, in a 138-124 win over Washington.</p><p>Earlier in the day, their sale to nine-man group headed by Boston businessman Steve Belkin was approved by the NBA.</p><p>Just two days after Tracy McGrady scored 62 against the Wizards, Stephen Jackson scored a career-high 42 points for Atlanta.</p><p>"We're pretty far down in the standings and not a lot of people really want to watch us," said Jackson, who had 31 points in the second half. "But we still want to win. We still want to compete. We started off soft. They were scoring too many easy baskets, and we weren't helping on defense."</p><p>The last team to have five players score 20 points or more in a game was Orlando, which did it on Jan. 26, 1993. Atlanta last did it in 1968 at Seattle.</p><p>Bob Sura scored 28, along with 10 assists and nine rebounds, while Jason Terry had 23 points, Jason Collier 22 (a career high) and Chris Crawford 20.</p><p>"Any history I can get right now, I'm happy with," said Collier, who signed a 10-day contract March 8 and has made a strong case for an extended stay, scoring 33 points in two games. "We've got some kind of offensive arsenal. We'll be down 10 and then you look up and we're up 20. It's weird."</p><p>The loss was the fifth straight for the Wizards, while Atlanta snapped a four-game losing streak.</p><p>"We just didn't have a clue what they were doing," said Washington's Jerry Stackhouse. "You don't expect that from a team with that record. They probably didn't have a whole lot of fear of us, either."</p><p>In all, the game featured eight 20-point scorers; Gilbert Arenas led Washington with 30, giving him 70 over the Wizards' last two games, while Jerry Stackhouse had 29 and Juan Dixon 21.</p><p>Atlanta scored 83 points after intermission.</p><p>"That was an old-fashioned shootout," said Sura. "That was a late-1980s NBA score. It was a lot of fun, though, getting up and down, scoring points. That's the way the game should be played."</p><p>Washington led by as many as 18 in the first half. Atlanta closed to 62-55 at intermission and opened the second half with a 9-3 run to cut it to one.</p><p>Jackson's 3-pointer pulled Atlanta even at 69, and Terry's steal and dunk with 7:27 left gave Atlanta the lead.</p><p>Sura, Terry and Jackson each hit a 3-pointer in an 11-1 run that gave the Hawks a 96-83 lead. The Wizards got as close as four (107-103), but Atlanta answered with an 11-0 run.</p><p>Notes:@ Washington's Jarvis Hayes missed his second straight game with a pulled hamstring ... Atlanta's Stephen Jackson averaged 20.0 points over the previous 24 games ... Fourteen of the Hawks' 21 wins have come against teams at .500 or better ... The five Magic players to score 20 points in the 1993 game were Tom Tolbert (24), Scott Skiles (22), Shaquille O'Neal (26), Anthony Bowie (20) and Nick Anderson (20).</p>

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