Too Much Hype For The Atlanta Hawks To Live Up To?

If you follow any NBA-related content on any social media platform and you haven’t seen Trae Young putting up buckets in a summer workout, you must be living under a rock.

This isn’t to say that Young hasn’t been hooping. He most certainly has and he looks poised to have a very solid sophomore campaign. But he’s just that: a sophomore. Arguably the best player on the Atlanta Hawks – John Collins – is only entering his third season. The supporting cast is rounded out by Cam Reddish and De’Andre Hunter, both rookies, Kevin Huerter, another sophomore, and veterans Chandler Parsons, Jabari Parker and Evan Turner.

Does this team look promising on paper? It certainly does. Do they have plenty of compelling names that jump off the pages? With the likes of Parker, Parsons, Young, etc., it’s easy to say so. But at its core, this is a roster that still needs time. They have intriguing talent that – if they can play as a unit – will equate to wins. But is it sustainable for an entire 82-game season?

The Hawks opened up at Caesars Sportsbook with a relatively high 36 wins for their over-under but, per Matt Moore of the Action Network, as of Tuesday morning they’ve dropped to 33 wins.

Still, 33 would be a marginal improvement compared to last year where they notched just 29 wins and finished 12th in the Eastern Conference.

Internal growth will have certainly been enough for the roster to improve in the wins column. But, apart from that, the Hawks didn’t substantially improve, deciding instead to focus on the development of their young core. In an offseason trade, Atlanta even lost Kent Bazemore, who was an important piece to its offensive unit – moving him to Portland for the aforementioned Evan Turner.

The trade never really made any sense, apart from giving Bazemore – the longest-tenured Hawk at the time of the trade – a chance to compete for a championship. Turner has a unique set of skills, particularly in the playmaking realm, but he’s a sub-30 percent career three-point shooter and will, more than likely, be a drain on Atlanta’s offense.

The upstart franchise was most certainly looking for point guard depth in the trade, so expect Turner to come off the bench and soak up minutes while Trae is resting.

Another move that could end up hurting Atlanta – at least this season – was trading Taurean Prince to the Nets for Allen Crabbe and draft assets. The move was clearly made to bolster their draft picks for both 2019 and 2020, but getting Crabbe in return wasn’t bad. The Nets liked the trade because it helped free up cap space for their two big free agent signings. Crabbe is a solid player, but he won’t provide nearly the same impact that Prince did. Prince has shot above 38 percent from three in his last two seasons and averaged over 13 points in 2018-19.

His offensive production will be missed, but his efficiency was often called into question. Atlanta made the move with draft picks in mind, so obviously they wanted to move on from Prince’s game.

Parker and Parsons both have the ability to come in right away and contribute offensively, but they’ve each had their respective struggles on defense, something noteworthy that Young too suffered with during the 2018-19 season. Parker is absolutely a player that can get a bucket, but his efficiency has come into question before – and he’s never quite gotten back to his No. 2 overall-worthy form since tearing his ACL for a second time.

Parker did average 14.5 points and 6.6 rebounds with an effective field goal percentage of 53.3 while playing for the Bulls and Wizards last season. These were his highest marks since the 2016-17 season and, actually, the best eFG% of Jabari’s career. Although the defense is still a huge issue, his addition offensively should help make up for what Atlanta lost with the Bazemore-Turner trade.

Parsons is another player who has struggled mightily with injuries. He is turning 31 years old at the beginning of the season and hasn’t eclipsed 36 games since 2015-16, never completing a full season either. Still, the last time he did play a healthy amount of games was for Dallas in 2015-16, in which Parsons averaged 13.7 points, on 41.4 percent from three-point land.

If Chandler can somehow stay healthy, he’ll contribute in a big way on offense as well. But staying healthy is the key for Parsons. He’s proven throughout his career that he can hoop but, as they say, the best kind of ability is availability.

Moving on to Atlanta’s young core, Young had a solid rookie-year outing. He averaged 19.1 points and 8.1 assists, but his efficiency was definitely called into question. Young had an effective field goal percentage of just 48 percent. Worse, his defense was practically morbid at times and boasted the second-worst defensive rating on the team at 114.8.

Understandably, defensive rating is a team statistic and the Hawks weren’t a good team last season – so to be fair, that number isn’t completely Young’s fault. But the fact that he’s the starting point guard and the future of the franchise, it’s not the start most would’ve liked to see. To wit, Young’s development did come a long way during the season as he was a -6.3 net rating pre-All Star break but a -0.4 post-break.

Acclimating to the league is never an easy task, and the fact that Young is considerably undersized doesn’t help. The bright spot, by a country mile, is that his offensive skills have translated almost seamlessly to the NBA and that is 100 percent why the Hawks drafted him.

In this writer’s opinion, Collins is the best player on the roster and there’s little reason to think he won’t be once again in 2019-20. He nearly averaged a double-double last season with 19.5 points and 9.8 boards. Additionally, Collins stretched the floor by shooting over 34 percent from three-point range with about three attempts per night. He’s a rather strong presence under the rim as well and can guard multiple positions along the perimeter.

But he’s still just entering his third season.

Huerter had a compelling rookie season, but he still needs to get his body NBA-ready. He’s not quite strong enough to be a solid defender and still struggles to create his own shot against above-average defenders. Overall, he’s likely to feature strongly in the Hawks’ offense moving forward – a veritable one-two punch alongside Young from deep.

Look, it’s this simple: The Atlanta Hawks really do have an exciting roster. It’s littered with young guys that own pizzazz and veterans that are highly-intriguing at this point in their respective careers. And yet. . . it’s far from a sure thing.

It’s easy to see why oddsmakers are backing off a bit on their initial early-season win projections. But if the Hawks can keep the core together and optimize their development, they could conceivably make the playoffs next season.

Even then, that’s a pretty big stretch.