A season for the Hawks that started with so much promise has quickly turned into a nightmare. I wrote last month that the season was close to being flushed down the drain for good if they didn’t improve on three key areas.
They didn’t improve on any of those three key areas.
Let’s list off all of the things that have gone horribly wrong this year:
- Trae Youngentered the season without a contract extension he desired. Then he missed a month and a half of action with a knee injury suffered in the fifth game. And finally, the organization (with help from Young’s agency) decided the time was right to move on.
Regardless of how you felt about Young, it was always going to be an extremely difficult pivot midseason when so many resources over so many years had gone into building around him.
One extra note: the centerpiece of the Young trade to Washington is now public enemy number one to the fanbase after his last second gaff and general ball dominance. So, even the pivot has been fruitless.
- Kristaps Porzingis was confident preseason that his bout with post-viral syndrome/postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) was in the rearview mirror. It was not. Most recently, he’s been out nursing an injury to his Achilles. To date, Porzingis has only played 413 total minutes and 17 games out of a possible 45. The all-in gamble on his health came up bust.
- Jalen Johnson’s growing list of deficiencies on defense have been magnified with the absence of Porzingis. Has the tradeoff between his offensive growth for defensive regression been worth it? That’s at least a valid question to ask for what this team needs.
- As an undersized 5, Onyeka Okongwu had begun to play the 4 part of the time — especially when sharing the floor with Porzingis. The plan was to make him a flexible third big man, splitting his time between both frontcourt positions while coming off the bench to limit his minutes.
Instead, he’s estimated to have played 95% of his minutes at center (per basketball-reference), is posting by far a career-low offensive rebound rate, and has been subject to an atrocious -12 on-off +/- per 100 possessions.
The lineups he’s been tasked to anchor defensively haven’t help and neither has playing the 24th most minutes in the league this year, somehow just fourth (!) on the team. The plus-minus metric to date is a statistical anomaly given his track record in previous seasons, but clearly his level of play has dropped.
- He’s a genuinely impactful defender now, but Zaccharie Risacher didn’t take the step forward offensively all of us had hoped. Not even close, in fact.
- Dyson Daniels, now the team’s starting point guard who has admittedly come on offensively, hasn’t made a three since December 14.
With the exception of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, you can point to every one of the Hawks’ top eight or nine players and argue that their impact has been levels below what was expected of them.
The Hawks get out-physicaled (I don’t care that it’s not a word) on a nightly basis. They can’t rebound. They can’t even defend in transition despite being a shockingly bad offensive rebounding team*.
*Sidenote: often teams prioritize one of those areas over the other, but you really shouldn’t be bad at both. Either send bodies to the glass or get back on defense. The Hawks, worryingly, do neither.
The heavy minutes load on Johnson, Daniels, Okongwu, and Alexander-Walker is clearly showing a major toll. They’ve been blown out at home more times than I can count, including a calamitous 43-point deficit at one point in a 26-point beatdown at the hands of the Boston Celtics last week.
Even the close games aren’t going their way. The team has been dreadful in clutch situations since the start of December.
Finally, as of Tuesday afternoon, the team is just barely clinging onto 10th in the standings, with the 11th and 12th place Bucks and Hornets respectively vying for that final Play-In Tournament.
From visions of a top-four conference finish to out of the postseason entirely would be a humiliating end to a season of collapses.
The team is a mess, and any hopes of being the next Indiana Pacers are over.
The team was projected to win 46.5 games (per basketball-reference), and they’re on pace to win a full 10 games fewer than that (roughly 36.5). Yes, the Hawks still have 37 games remaining, the Eastern Conference isn’t exactly a juggernaut, and the schedule gets easier after the All-Star break, but it will be way too little too late.
I do think they’ll make the Play-In Tournament at least and have a puncher’s chance at entering the playoff bracket.
But for what? A sweep at the hands of the Detroit Pistons? Yawn.
So now where do they go? For me, here are the biggest areas to monitor going forward:
Finding a franchise center
The trade deadline is on the near horizon. I have to imagine the decision makers have been working the phones heavy in wake of the wildly disappointing performance of the team.
We’ve heard the Hawks linked to Giannis Antetokounmpo (who is now reportedly off the market), Anthony Davis (likely not happening with him nursing yet another injury), and other bigs who can fill in the huge physicality and rebounding gaps in the team.
This is almost certainly the end of the road for the persistently unavailable free-agent-to-be Kristaps Porzingis. I don’t foresee any team offering him a multi-year contract given his injury and illness recurrences — especially not the Hawks.
And Okongwu’s overburdening was discussed above — I still see him as a quality backup big on a friendly contract but nothing more.
Atlanta needs to find a dependable center who can anchor the defense, clear out space for rebounds, and provide a level a physicality the team needs (let’s just move past the fact that Atlanta had a real opportunity to do so two drafts ago).
Could they use their projected cap space this summer to sign Isaiah Hartenstein, likely the best center in the upcoming free agent market? That’s one thought. Or they could target someone else by trade.
But this, to me, is the most pressing issue given that the Hawks are headed for a ninth straight bottom half of the league finish in defensive rating.
Draft acquisitions
The one thing that has gone right has been the equally ugly collapse of the Milwaukee Bucks in addition to the (somewhat predictable) dreadful performance of the New Orleans Pelicans. More than halfway through the season, the best of both superpick acquired at the draft last year looks even better now than then.
It’s unlikely the Pelicans will finish with the worst record in the NBA given the many tanking teams just ahead of them and their own lack of incentive to tank. But all it takes is a few lucky ping pong bounces to possibly transform this franchise with a premium talent.
With the Cleveland Cavaliers also underperforming relative to preseason expectations, the pick swap they picked up through the De’Andre Hunter trade could land them a first-round pick in the teens.
It’s debatable that the Hawks focused a bit too much on youth over experience this past offseason, but with these two picks in a strong draft, it’s still a very viable avenue to add cheap — and possibly high-end — talent.
Assess whether Snyder is the right person for the job
Here is the elephant in the room.
Let me start by saying coaching in the NBA is an incredibly difficult job, and that so much of the position happens behind closed doors. You need to manage rich and famous NBA player egos, and navigate the politics of communicating with the media, one’s front office, and one’s ownership group.
Also, of course, comes the Xs and Os portion of the job. Implementing your system of basketball tactics and strategies — all that good stuff.
Putting a good product on the floor is clearly the most visible part of it all. And I’m not here to judge head coach Quin Snyder on anything but what the eyes can see.
One can argue this season’s roster isn’t fit to succeed (although bettors and oddsmakers certainly thought so preseason). One can are argue injuries have derailed the initial plan (although that hasn’t stopped the Celtics, Nuggets, and others from overcoming major injuries).
One can no longer argue that Snyder has elevated the individual play of players — as detailed above — or the team writ large.
Wins and losses are inarguable, and when a team’s record underwhelms relative to expectations, the coach tends to get the hook. This is just a universal truth throughout the history of the NBA.
Lloyd Pierce fell fate to that very scenario. Once the goalposts moved from player development to contention, his 14-20 record halfway through the 2020-21 season sealed his fate. Snyder’s 20-25 record to date looks eerily similar to Pierce’s record then and Nate McMillan’s 29-30 record in 2022-23 (although both previous coaches had some level of fallout in the locker room).
Maybe it’s best to wait until the end of the season for the higher ups to assess this situation. And if a different direction is desired, there will likely be a great availability of candidates to replace him in the offseason.
But a real, honest assessment needs to be made before tipping off next season lest we end up in the same place this time next year.
For the Denver Broncos, irrepressible optimism was replaced by exorbitant doubt in a matter of moments.
