By: Kellen Brechbill
All stats for this article were obtained through NBA.com
After an exciting win against the Washington Wizards last night, the Hawks are bolstering a 33-33 record, and are now a couple games ahead of Toronto for the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference. The season hasn’t been the outcome many fans had expected as the Hawks have been woefully mediocre. To put it into perspective, not only do they boast a sub .500 record, but the Hawks have also scored 7,736 points this season while allowing 7,731. That’s only a five point difference! Statistically, this might be one of the most average teams in NBA history. As a result, it’s looking like the Hawks are poised to be a play-in team for the second year in a row. Retaining almost all of their core from the playoff run in 2021, and with the addition of Dejounte Murray, you’d think that this team was knocking on the door to a championship. However, unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. If anything, it seems that this team has steadily digressed since the magical run in 2021.
It’s easy to blame Nate Mcmillan and the coaching staff, but the Hawks haven’t looked any better under Quin Snyder either. Obviously, it’s been a small sample size, but the team still looks like they’re not fully clicking on both sides of the court yet. I truly believe this will change as Snyder continues to learn about this team, but when it pertains to this season, I don’t think there’s much he can do at this point. If there’s going to be any turnaround this year, the players are going to have to hold each other accountable and step up. The Hawks have enough talent to be a top 6 team in the conference, there’s no doubt about that, but they really need to figure it out on both sides of the ball. There are still plenty of games left to make a run for the six seed. If they can string together some wins it could immediately change the trajectory of this season. But, it’s going to take a full team effort if they want to make a legitimate run for that six spot.
This leads me to my next point, where do the Hawks need to improve the most? As mentioned before, if this team wants to make a run they will need to be better on both sides of the ball, especially defensively. They currently rank 22nd in the league in defensive rating this season. It’s a slight improvement from last year where they ranked nearly dead last but still not good enough to consistently win games in this league. Surprisingly, a huge reason for the poor defensive rating has been because of rebounding. Currently, the Hawks rank 21st in defensive rebounding percentage and 25th in opponent second chance points. Meaning, that they are allowing way too many second chance points from offensive rebounds. It’s already extremely tough to win games in this league as it is, but giving teams multiple opportunities to score makes it even tougher.
The frustrating part about this is that rebounding is a pure effort stat, you can’t completely blame coaching for rebounding. At the end of the day, players need to box out and aggressively attack the glass. The Hawks have the athletes in Murray, Collins, Capela, Hunter, Okongwu, and Johnson to be a great rebounding team. They just need to start making it more of a priority to grab boards. It doesn’t matter how great of a coach Snyder is, if you can’t efficiently rebound the ball then you’re not going to win many games in this league. Until the effort changes on the glass, the Hawks will continue to be a below average team on the defensive end.
Defense and rebounding hasn’t been the only problem facing the Hawks either, they have also been struggling a bit on the offensive end as well. The stats may not show it, but the Hawks struggle mightily getting points from players who aren’t named Trae Young or Dejounte Murray. Combined, both players are averaging nearly 50 points per game, and that’s not even accounting for the points where they are the primary assist. Average in their assists and both players account for easily over 70 to 80 points per game. Remember, the Hawks currently average 117 points per game, that’s about 70% of their points accounted for by Young and Murray.
Now, this may not sound like a bad thing, which it isn’t. But, in order to win in this league, you need to have role players who can get their own buckets too. At the moment, outside of Bogi and Hunter, the Hawks don’t have that luxury. John Collins and Clint Capela are too reliant on the pick and roll with Trae, you rarely see them score points without Trae perfectly setting them up. We can’t rely on our guards to make every single play for our offense, there needs to be more production from other guys throughout the lineup as well. Guys like Collins, Okongwu, and Johnson need to start establishing more of an offensive presence down low to help free up our guards and create more of a balanced attack. If they can do that it’d immediately make our guard trio of Young, Murray, and Bogi much more lethal and our offense more dangerous overall. Other than that though, the offense has still been highly productive this season, ranking top 10 in offensive efficiency.
Even though the Hawks have statistically been extremely average this season, they still have a great opportunity to grab the six seed and avoid the play-in tournament. They have plenty of talent to do it, but it’s going to take better effort on the glass and the defensive end overall. The offense is lethal enough to give this team a shot, they just need their defense to be at least average. If the Hawks can clean up their rebound play and other defensive deficiencies, they could make some real noise down the stretch. They have another game tonight against Washington, it will be a good opportunity to get over .500 and get back to the winning ways.
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