Are the Atlanta Hawks the Team of the Future?
The Atlanta Hawks' rise to prominence has been one of the biggest stories of the 2014-15 NBA season thus far, with the previously ground-bound birds soaring all the way to the top of the Eastern Conference standings.
Sixteen wins in a row. Double-digit leads in each game during that unbeaten stretch. Two losses in a 32-contest stretch. Seven games of leeway between Atlanta and the rest of the NBA's weaker half. Eleven consecutive victories over Western Conference squads.
The numbers associated with this Hawks team are just ridiculous.
Behind an unselfish offense that features plenty of ball movement and a cohesive defensive unit, Atlanta has gone on a blitzkrieg in 2015, and it all feels quite sustainable. In fact, according to TeamRtng+, which looks at adjusted offensive and defensive ratings and is explained in more detail here, the Hawks have not only played like one of the best teams in 2014-15 but are currently on pace to be the No. 58 squad throughout all of NBA history.
Mike Budenholzer, the head coach of the Hawks and possible front-runner for Coach of the Year as we near the All-Star break, has adopted many of the principles he learned and helped employ during his time with the San Antonio Spurs. And in some ways, he's improved upon them, building an insane amount of chemistry and making full use of the Mariana Trench level of depth he has at his disposal.
He's turned the Hawks into the team of the future, though it's not necessarily for the reasons you may expect.
Offensive Principles
During the 2014 NBA Finals, the Spurs played some of the most beautiful basketball imaginable. They shredded an overmatched Miami Heat defense with incredible movement and passing, sometimes scoring in the half-court set without even allowing the rock to make contact with the hardwood.
That's the style the Hawks have tried to emulate under Budenholzer, and the results have been fantastic.
According to Basketball-Reference.com, 60.3 percent of Atlanta's makes from inside the arc have been the result of an assist, and that's a higher percentage than any other team in the NBA. In second are the Golden State Warriors, assisting on 59.2 percent of their two-point buckets.
Beyond the arc, the story isn't any different. The Hawks are No. 1, with 92.7 percent of their made triples coming after the player in question received a well-timed pass. At No. 2 are the Utah Jazz (91.4 percent), and only four more teams are over 90 percent.
This is the reason for success, right?
The ball movement looks like it's the driving force behind an offense that's scoring 109.7 points per 100 possessions, which checks in as the No. 6 mark in the Association. The Hawks move the ball with complete unselfishness, always seeking out the best possible shot.
But the true reason actually goes beyond assisting on nearly every made bucket. After all, there's virtually no positive correlation between assisting often and scoring a lot of points. Here's how every team in 2014-15 fares in percent assisted on all shots (calculated by weighting percent assisted on twos and threes by the frequency with which teams shot from each range) and offensive rating:
Sharing the ball does not always lead to having a great offense. Nor does having a standout scoring unit require constant movement of the rock.
The Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks have been among the best of the best in total percent assisted, but neither features an offense you'd want to write home about. Conversely, the Toronto Raptors, Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers have been great at scoring efficiently, but they don't rack up assists very often.
No, sharing the ball doesn't make the Hawks the team of the future. Instead, it's the coaching staff's ability to create a system that allows the team to maximize the talents of the players on the court.
Take Kyle Korver as an example. It's no coincidence the 33-year-old sniper is now having the best season of his career. The personnel around him draws enough defensive attention to offset his gravitational pull on the perimeter, and that leaves Korver free to roam half-court sets and receive plenty of open (or minimally contested) opportunities.
Those stats that NBA.com's Conrad Kaczmarek provides on Twitter are only a few of the incredible numbers associated with Korver, who's still on pace to produce the league's first 50/50/90 season by a qualified shooter.
For the Hawks, ball movement should indeed be the focus. But that's not what other teams should try emulating.
The Toronto Raptors, for example, have built a dominant offense based on attacking the basket to get to the charity stripe and refusing to turn the ball over with any sort of regularity. They're among the league's worst at generating assists, ranking No. 27 and No. 29 in percent assisted on twos and threes, respectively.
Everyone operates differently, and what's made the Hawks a successful offensive unit is the perfect blend of personnel and strategy. Budenholzer hasn't forced a ball-sharing system upon a group of isolation players but rather designed something that makes sense for the players at his disposal. And in hindsight, getting rid of Lou Williams may have been more than a cash dump for this very reason.
He's put shooters all over the court so that Paul Millsap can work the baseline and Jeff Teague can take advantage of his impressive touch shots around the basket. He's made the most of players like Pero Antic, whose skip passes on the perimeter are among the most underrated skills of any Atlanta player.
"We are playing a basketball that we can sustain," Thabo Sefolosha recently told Chris Vivlamore of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It's not anybody doing something out of the ordinary that makes us win. Everybody is playing to their character. Everybody is playing to their role. It's working for us."
Defensive Discipline
The same principles apply on the defensive end.
Somehow, the Hawks' effectiveness on defense has been largely overlooked, as the narrative that everyone seems to pay attention to revolves around the ball-sharing offense. But Atlanta is even better at preventing points than it is at scoring them.
During the 2014-15 season, the team has allowed just 102 points per 100 possessions, giving it a defensive rating that trails only the marks produced by the Golden State Warriors and Portland Trail Blazers. And lately, the Hawks have been even more suffocating. Over the last 32 games—of which they've won 30—the defensive rating is a stellar 99.7. And during the 16-game winning streak, it's been 100.5.
To put that in perspective, the Dubs' league-leading defensive rating is 100.2.
Expanding on that tweet from ESPN Stats & Info, the Hawks fare quite well in each of the four defensive factors. Opponents have posted a 48.8 effective field-goal percentage against them (No. 10 in the league). Meanwhile, the Hawks have forced turnovers on 14.8 percent of the opposition's possessions (No. 4), grabbed 74.3 percent of the available defensive rebounds (No. 18, which is easily the worst mark of the four) and allowed 0.187 free throws per field-goal attempt (No. 4).
For this squad, the type of balance contained in those numbers is crucial. But how was it achieved?
Again, by playing to the strengths of the roster.
Atlanta doesn't have any massive rim-protecting threats, nor does it roster any players who eat up boards on the defensive glass. So to account for that size deficit, Budenholzer has packed the paint, much as Tom Thibodeau often has the Chicago Bulls do.
But upon closer examination, the Hawks have a bunch of long-armed wing players who collapse on driving bodies and rely on their length to make kick-out passes rather difficult. Sefolosha and Kent Bazemore receive heavy run for this very reason, and the smaller defenders are quite savvy at reading lanes and ending up in havoc-wreaking spots.
Communication is the name of the game. So, too, is sticking to a certain role and refusing to gamble when doing so isn't beneficial, instead remaining disciplined and contesting each and every shot that goes up.
Roster Construction
Atlanta has achieved all this success without the presence of a superstar. Though as many as four players may represent this team at the All-Star festivities, no member of the roster received enough fan support to get within shouting distance of a starting nod. Few players even resonate throughout households comprised solely of NBA fans, and many of the contributing members thrive on this undeserved anonymity.
It stands in stark contrast to what so many other squads have tried to do during this era of the "Big Three."
Some teams constantly seek stars. They try turning lesser assets into that one key player. They amass talent that may or may not work well together.
Sometimes they do (see: Heat, Miami). Sometimes they don't (see: Lakers, Los Angeles).
Atlanta isn't the team of the future because other squads are going to copy its system. They may find it hard to replicate given the lack of feasible personnel, but most are going to realize they can't just create a Spurs 3.0/Hawks 2.0.
Instead, this franchise stands out because it can help teams move out of the "Big Three" era and remain highly competitive while doing so.
There are only so many stars in the league, and there are far more teams. Only a select few organizations can have one marquee player, much less two or three. Even the Spurs fall into that smaller group, given the longstanding presence of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, and that's what makes the Hawks even more conducive to that "Team of the Future" label.
Theoretically, everyone can put together a collection of talent that adheres to the principles of Gestalt psychology, one in which the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. The Spurs were the original proof and have been for almost two decades, and now the Hawks are supplanting them as an even more approachable model. But it requires plenty of foresight, intelligence when working the free-agent market and the right coaching staff.
There are no market restrictions, and while it's hard, that means it's not impossible for any organization.
Teams that never draw big-name players during the hottest months of the year still have a chance. After all, this Atlanta franchise is the one about which ESPN.com's Kevin Arnovitz recently wrote, "This brings into focus a stubborn paradox: The Hawks won't attract top talent until the building is full of Hawks fans...but the building won't be full of Hawks fans until the Hawks have top talent."
But the second part of that statement is no longer true.
Thanks to this season's success, the numbers are up across the board, and I'm not talking about the ones produced by the players. Per Vivlamore, SportSouth broadcasts of Hawks games are up in viewership by 61 percent. Philips Arena is filling up on a regular basis, even during games in the middle of the week against non-elite squads.
With every win, the Hawks further endear themselves to a city that has literally never experienced a winning streak from any professional team as long as the Hawks' current one. And with every victory, they also offer hope to the other teams in the NBA that never attract superstars in free agency.
Acquire the right personnel, put the proper coach in place and then build a system that would make Gestalt proud. If you can follow those steps, hard as they may be, you don't need a LeBron James or Kevin Durant in order to win one basketball game after another.
Note: All stats, unless otherwise indicated, come from Basketball-Reference.com and are current heading into Jan. 27's games.
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