We’ll see if the Atlanta Hawks have gotten their road mojo back tonight with a return to the Palace at Auburn Hills. This second game of a six-game road trip against the Detroit Pistons is as good a time as any to show it.

Last season’s edition of the Hawks finished at 17-16 on the road, their first season above .500 in away games since the lockout season of 1998-99. They were well on their way to another winning road record (9-5) this season, until coming up short in Detroit on January 4, starting a string of six consecutive defeats away from Philips Arena. Building from Saturday’s nail-biting win in Milwaukee with a victory tonight can get them over the .500 hump, and may be enough to get some positive momentum going.

Detroit dropped both sets of a home-and-home against the Pacers over the weekend, the 19-point home loss on Saturday a considerable improvement over the 32-point shellacking from the night before. Still, the Pistons have split their last eight contests. And with Coach Lawrence Frank pulling out all the stops, they’re confident they can find somebody with a hot hand against Atlanta.

With Will Bynum fire-roasting the Hawks with 31 points off the bench, the Pistons wiped out a 22-point lead in Atlanta on December 26, forcing the first of two overtimes before the Hawks prevailed 126-119. After building a 17-point lead on the strength of Austin Daye’s 20 points, Detroit hung on to win 85-84 on January 4, after a late 18-2 charge by the Hawks, using a little help from the refs (on a Al Horford three-pointer, reduced to two) and Andre Drummond’s deflection of Lou Williams at the close. For various reasons, Bynum, Daye, and Drummond won’t be around to help out this time.

Only six games behind 8^th-seeded Milwaukee, Detroit’s confident they could make a little run toward the playoffs, if they could simply keep all of their top talent on the floor.

They’ll go into tonight’s matchup without super-rook Drummond, who suffered a tailbone stress fracture back on February 8. Russian rookie Vyacheslav Kravtsov (career-high 14 points and 10 rebounds Friday at Indiana) and Charlie Villanueva (shooting 5-for-30 in his last four games, 1-for-11 on Saturday) are trading off extra minutes to help alleviate pressure on leading scorer/rebounder Greg Monroe and Jason Maxiell. Now the franchise’s longest-tenured player with the trade of Tayshaun Prince to Memphis, Maxiell has morphed into more of a defensive player this season with career-highs of 1.4 BPG (19^th in NBA) and 3.7 defensive RPG, but is shooting just 43.4% from the floor, by far the lowest in his last seven seasons.

Brandon Knight remains a gametime decision, but will likely rest his knee after hyperextending it on Wednesday against the Bobcats. He tried to return to that game, and promptly twisted an ankle that has surely experienced better months. Coach Frank has been playing rookie Khris Middleton more frequently, so ahead of fellow 2012 second-rounder Kim English, so look for him to soak up more of Knight’s minutes at shooting guard.

It seems Will Bynum couldn’t stand Tyler Hansbrough’s guts, so he socked him there Saturday after absorbing a rough screen. He’ll miss out on tonight’s game after getting suspended. The Yellow Jacket alum led the Pistons in scoring in each of their last two games.

At least from an offensive standpoint, Jose Calderon has been a boon for Detroit’s Not-So-Bad-Boys. Acquired in the trade of Daye and Prince to the Grizzlies, the former Raptor helps quarterback the offense without a ton of fumbles. Detroit assist average of 22.5 per game in February is up from 19.8 in January. Out of ten games, Calderon’s registered zero turnovers in four of them, playing a minimum of 25 minutes in all of them. He’s also stolen the ball at least three times in his last seven Piston games, something he accomplished only twice over the course of 45 games with Toronto. His veteran presence as a lead guard takes pressure off of Knight and Rodney Stuckey. For a team that ranks next to last in free throw percentage, his 91.7 FT% surely helps as well.

A solid run from Horford in the past five games (24.2 PPG, 10 RPG) has moved him up into the top ten of the NBA for rebounding (9.7 RPG) this season, ahead of Monroe. Both big men enjoy passing the ball (3.3 APG and 2.9 TO/G for Monroe; 3.2 APG and 1.8 TO/G for Horford), so this should be an intriguing matchup throughout. Zaza Pachulia's Achilles is acting up after a strong rebounding display in Milwaukee, so without his availability, we may see more of Johan Petro or even Jeremy Tyler in stretches tonight against Kravtsov.

Monday must be Josh Smith’s favorite day of the week! That’s because he’s shooting a lofty 71% on three-pointers (10-for-14) on Monday games, versus 29% in games for the rest of the week. The lack of groans from the Philips faithful must be helping his accuracy when he decides to let it fly: 38.4 3FG% on the road, 27.5% at home. Someone should alert him, however, that he takes fewer shots (1.96 3FGAs per game) in Hawks victories than in the games they lose (3.00 3FGAs per game). To wit, the Hawks are 5-1 when Smoove takes no three-pointers, and 12-4 when he shoots no more than one.

Go Hawks!

~lw3