Breaking Down Atlanta Hawks' Shooting Guard Position for 2014-15 Season
Shooting guard looks like a stable if unspectacular position for the Atlanta Hawks in 2014-15.
Last year's starter, Kyle Korver, is back for another season with the team. Korver's dead-eye three-point shooting ability will provide Atlanta's first string with the spacing necessary to run its offense well.
But who will support Korver at the position?
The front office's offseason moves will undoubtedly affect the Hawks' production at shooting guard as it compares to last year. Gone is Louis Williams, who the team traded to the Toronto Raptors in order to clear cap space. The Hawks also brought in Thabo Sefolosha and Kent Bazemore in free agency, both of whom have played primarily shooting guard throughout their careers.
How will Sefolosha and Bazemore factor into the 2-guard position? Will Korver reach the 34 minutes per game he played last season? Are there any dark-horse shooting guards to look out for? We'll answer these questions and many more in this article.
But first, let's take a look at how the Hawks shooting guards performed last year.
Grading the Hawks Shooting Guards in 2013-14
Below is a table presenting the statistics of the team's shooting guard production versus its opponents last season.
| Points | Rebounds | Assists | Turnovers | eFG% | PER | |
| Hawks | 17.4 | 5.3 | 5.7 | 2.6 | .521 | 13.0 |
| Opponents | 20.6 | 5.8 | 4.6 | 2.8 | .519 | 14.7 |
As you can see, the Hawks shooting guards performed a little bit worse than their counterparts in 2013-14. But considering what the team had to work with, that is nothing to be ashamed of.
Korver was a straight-up sniper last year, as he always is. He led the NBA in three-point field-goal percentage (.472) and shot at least 40 percent from downtown in each month of the season.
Just let that second statistic sink in.
In the month Korver was the coldest from three-point land (April), he still made two out of every five treys he shot. If he had sustained that success rate over the entire season, he still would have placed ahead of knockdown shooters Dirk Nowitzki, J.J. Redick and Kevin Durant in three-point accuracy.
However, Korver was by no means an excellent all-around player last year. He was a willing defender, but his below-average athleticism prevented him from being a stopper on that end. He was also a solid passer but rarely created his own shots.
After Korver, the Hawks tabbed a hodgepodge of players at the 2-guard position, but nobody established himself as the clear second-string shooting guard.
Williams and Shelvin Mack were the best shooting guards off the bench, but neither had the size to play the position at a consistently high level. Williams, known as a microwave off the bench, averaged just 15.6 points per 36 minutes in a down year by his standards. Mack's best minutes came when he played point guard.
Cartier Martin and to a lesser extent John Jenkins also chipped in some minutes at 2-guard. Neither was a true difference-maker, though.
This was a relative position of weakness for the Hawks in 2013-14, but Korver's ability to perfectly fit the floor-spacer role keeps the grade respectable.
Overall Grade: C
How Did the Offseason Change the Shooting Guard Rotation?
First, let's look at the shooting guards the Hawks will be missing from last year's rotation, Williams and Martin.
Williams, who played 34 percent of the team's minutes at shooting guard, per 82games, was traded to the Raptors to clear cap space for the Hawks. Martin, who signed a contract with the Detroit Pistons this summer, mainly played small forward but still logged 6 percent of Atlanta's minutes at 2-guard last year.
The signings of both Bazemore and Sefolosha will easily offset the loss of the aforementioned players.
Bazemore is a high-energy all-around player who possesses the size (6'5") at shooting guard that neither Williams (6'2") nor Mack (6'3") could supply for the Hawks last year. He's still only 25 years old and eager to prove he has a place as a valuable contributor in the NBA.
The 30-year-old Sefolosha is a long defender accustomed to high-pressure situations (78 career playoff games) and to playing as a starter (407 starts) from his tenure with the Oklahoma City Thunder. If he can be more consistent with his on-and-off jump shot, the Hawks will have a valuable 3-and-D player off the bench.
What Will the Shooting Guard Rotation Look Like in 2014-15?
At 33 years old, Korver played arguably the greatest basketball of his career last year under Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer, as Grantland's Zach Lowe pointed out.
Lowe said the following about Korver:
"No coach has unleashed the full breadth of Korver’s game like Budenholzer. Korver isn’t a traditional pick-and-roll player; he can’t dribble the ball 25 feet to the rim, juking dudes along the way. But Budenholzer has tailored a sort of hybrid species of pick-and-roll to his secret star — a high-speed curling action in which Korver takes a pitch or a handoff, probes the defense with a dribble or two, and makes the next pass from there:
"
The spacing Korver provides for the starting unit and his newfound ball-handling chops keep him as a lock for the first unit.
After Korver, things get a bit interesting.
Sefolosha is accustomed to playing shooting guard, but that's mostly because the Thunder had four-time scoring champion Kevin Durant manning the small forward position. The new Hawk's skill set is better suited to the 3, where he can spell starter DeMarre Carroll, whose game resembles Sefolosha's.
That leaves Bazemore, Mack and Jenkins as the three main candidates to seize the backup shooting guard job.
We can first eliminate Mack, who demonstrated at the end of last season that point guard is clearly his best position. As 82games shows, he was a totally different player when he initiated the second unit's offense.
| Points | Rebounds | Assists | Turnovers | eFG% | PER | |
| As PG | 23.5 | 4.2 | 11.6 | 3.1 | .574 | 20.9 |
| As SG | 16.5 | 5.2 | 8.5 | 3.0 | .445 | 12.1 |
I predict that Bazemore will take the second-string shooting guard slot over Jenkins. Although Jenkins is a fantastic outside shooter, Bazemore can offer the Hawks help in more areas, such as defense. I'm willing to bet DeMarre Carroll still remembers getting his layup attempt swatted away by his future teammate last season.
Jenkins will settle in as the third-string 2-guard without much competition, barring roster moves.
Conclusion
With Korver, Bazemore and Jenkins in the rotation and Thabo Sefolosha and Shelvin Mack getting spot duty, the shooting guard position is not one the Hawks need to be worrying about too much heading into 2014-15, unlike last season.
The Hawks should definitely be preparing for a serious ascent up the Eastern Conference standings with the help of their new position of strength.
Playing-Time Predictions
Kyle Korver: 31 minutes per game (24 at shooting guard)
Kent Bazemore: 22 minutes (17 at SG)
John Jenkins: 12 minutes (10 at SG)
Thabo Sefolosha: 24 minutes (six at SG)
Shelvin Mack: 20 minutes (two at SG)
Note: All stats used are from Sports-Reference.com unless otherwise indicated.
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