Can Atlanta Hawks Regain Title-Worthy Momentum in Time?
The Atlanta Hawks have taken a 2-0 lead in their first-round series, but it hasn't been pretty. Al Horford and Co. edged the Brooklyn Nets 99-92 in Game 1 and could've lost Game 2 had a Deron Williams potential game-tying jumper gone down in the final seconds, eventually pulling out a 96-91 victory Wednesday evening.
Still, even after backing into the playoffs as much as a 60-win team possibly can (they went 7-8 over their last 15 games), the Hawks head to Brooklyn for Game 3 in as good a position as possible. They're going to win this series. (Don't freak, that statement is jinx-proof). But can Atlanta actually become a team of consequence as we get into May and even June?
It seems like there's a "Hawks" in the Eastern Conference every year. Maybe those "Hawks" aren't wearing the same jerseys, but they are representing the same thing: The dominant record in the East standing the best chance to keep LeBron James out of the NBA Finals.
The past couple of years, your Hawks were the Indiana Pacers. Before that, they were the Chicago Bulls. Actually, if Derrick Rose is able to perform like he did in Saturday's Game 1 against the Milwaukee Bucks for the whole postseason, maybe the Bulls are actually this year's Hawks...
OK, I just confused myself. Let's move on.
We know what the Hawks symbolize. It's teamwork. Grittiness. Passing. Hmmm...What other cliches can we throw out there?
Unselfishness? Intelligence? Shooters galore? Those all work.
The sum of the Hawks' parts is greater than their whole. Oh, that's a good one.
But with all those positives comes plenty of negativity, cliche and all. It's under the same umbrella, too. Most of the critiques you'll see about Atlanta have little to do with the Hawks' actual flaws, like their lack of rim-protection, their size and rebounding issues or their ranking 16th in points allowed per possession over the final month of the season.
Fans acknowledge Bud's boys went 7-8 to close the year (a somewhat misleading record since it occurred after the Hawks no longer had anything to play for), but they don't necessarily blame the slide on those qualities. Instead, we're all left to either debate, argue or combat one unfairly unanswerable question: Can a team win without a star?
The Hawks don't have a conventional 60-win roster. Their starting lineup includes the likes of Horford, Jeff Teague, Paul Millsap, Kyle Korver and DeMarre Carroll, four of whom were All-Stars this year out of respect to the best team in the conference and disrespect to the actual conference itself. But when you rattle off those starters, it does seem more like it's a lineup bound for the Hall of Very Good.
Instead, Atlanta takes conceptual inspiration from teams like the 2004 Detroit Pistons, who won it all and later had four of their own go to the All-Star Game.
Who was closest to star level on that Detroit squad? Probably Chauncey Billups, who spoke to Michael Lee of the Washington Post about the Hawks' chances to do something special back in February:
"With the salary cap and guys getting paid nowadays and this whole superstar thing—everybody want all the shots—I just don’t know that [what I had with the Pistons] could be duplicated. But they’re kind of changing what I thought a little. They’re playing a beautiful basketball and I see a lot of similarities because they’re moving the ball, they care one another. Everyone on the team knows who they are and I think that’s undervalued.
"
That '04 Pistons team was probably the last "star-less" NBA champion. Since, we've had mixes of LeBron James, San Antonio Spurs people, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Shaquille O'Neal and others. But we haven't seen someone of Horford's or Millsap's or Teague's caliber lead a team to a title.
Help a team there? Sure. But not lead them.
Yet, it's possible not one of those guys is Atlanta's best player. Maybe the team's biggest advantage is the mind sitting on the bench.
I did just mention "Spurs people." Well, one of those unidentified P.O.I.s is Mike Budenholzer, a long-time Gregg Popovich assistant and current coach of the Hawks.
The NBA's newest Coach of the Year proved to be one of the more creative play-callers on any bench this season. He mended an offense perfect for his roster, one predicated around shooting and running guys around screens. No one can defend Korver well with the way the Hawks play him. Some can guard him better than others, but no one's doing it as effectively as they would prefer.
The Hawks prey on defensive miscommunication. They make a D talk as much as possible (they set more screens than any other team in the league), and once a defender goes in the wrong direction or guards the wrong guy, they pounce while finding the open man.
That strategy works best because of Atlanta's spacing. But the Hawks' ability to spread has been uncharacteristically off against Brooklyn, which has allowed the Nets to double Korver around screens and pack the paint on drive-and-kicks a little more comfortably. It's part of why they have played Atlanta so close in these first couple of games.
Space the floor, and you'll score more.
Cramp the paint, and scoring you ain't.
Even if they continue to slump (relatively, of course), the Hawks can get by the Nets without too much trouble. Brooklyn is simply too...Netsy with its monotonous offense, sluggish defense and unscrupulous malaise that's marinaded within the team all year.
The Hawks could probably scrub the floor with the Washington Wizards or Toronto Raptors. But what happens if and when they get to the Eastern Conference Finals and have to meet the Cleveland Cavaliers in a series during which their best player could only be the fourth best on the floor on any given night?
And if they do, somehow, get past LeBron and the Cavs, how would they perform against Western Conference defenses which are a notch up like the Spurs', Memphis Grizzlies' and Golden State Warriors' in a potential Finals match? The Hawks may hunt miscommunication, but those Ds wouldn't provide much to scour. The advantage somehow evaporates—or at least begins to condense.
The Hawks won't always get as lucky as they did during Game 2. If you're worried about them, you're only a reasonable person (though you should probably rein it in if you think the Hawks are dropping these two contests in Brooklyn and letting the series slip away when they're already up 2-0).
If Atlanta plays the Wizards in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, something that's looking more and more likely with the Wiz up 2-0 as well, they won't get help from plays like this one from Deron Williams, which occurred with under a minute to go in regulation and the Nets trailing by only one point:
Or this play from only a couple of possessions later when Williams could've tied the game, but clanked a gimme jumper:
Still, the Hawks have a shot. They move the ball as well as anyone, and they can certainly recapture the magic that made them so brilliant while getting off to a 53-14 start. It's been proven in San Antonio time and time again that active screening can turn an offense from solid to dominant, and they screen as well as anyone, including the Spurs.
“It is a team sport,” Horford told Lee. “But usually the people that sacrifice the most are the most successful.”
The Hawks obviously have ceded their more selfish tendencies.
Horford could be putting up bigger numbers in a system more centered around him, but he's not. Korver could die on his routes when a pass isn't coming his way, almost like a disgruntled wide receiver who isn't getting the ball, but he doesn't and remains the one of the scariest decoys in the league because of it. Guys like Teague and Dennis Schroder, who has immediately become one of the best backup point guards in the league, could gripe about sharing floor duties, but that hasn't happened either.
Atlanta has sentenced selfishness to the guillotine, and its play has shined through because of it. But the question remains: Is that enough?
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of April 23 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com andNBA.com.
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