NBA Season Preview 2019-20: The 5 biggest questions for the Atlanta Hawks

Prior to the start of the 2019-20 NBA season, it’s time to answer the five biggest questions about the Atlanta Hawks.

1. The best-case scenario for the Hawks this season is ____________.

The best-case scenario for the Hawks this season is winning a minimum of 30 games.

Last season, the Atlanta Hawks won 29 games and finished 12th in the Eastern Conference standings. Not much was expected of this team entering the year, but the immediate chemistry between Trae Young and John Collins made this team one of the most entertaining in the league.

That duo comprised one of the better pick-and-roll combinations in the entire NBA. Young’s ability to shoot from 30-plus feet and Collins’ ability to jump out of the gym at a moment’s notice made it so that if the defense fell asleep for just one second, they were dead.

Why only the one-win increase in the best-case scenario then? Even though the East still isn’t as strong as the West from top to bottom, there are a bunch of teams middling around the same level. Of that group, the Hawks — sans Vince Carter — are easily the youngest of the bunch. As history shows, young teams are rarely the ones to make the leap and Atlanta’s core of Young, Collins, Kevin Huerter, Cam Reddish and DeAndre Hunter is not exactly veteran-laden.

Head coach Lloyd Pierce has said that the team will be trying to implement more of his defensive stylings this season and there are sure to be growing pains for this group along the way.

Maintaining their level from a year ago (with the majority of their roster turned over from last season) is a step in the right direction for this group.

2. If Trae Young is Steve Nash and John Collins is Amar’e Stoudemire, who is the Hawks’ Boris Diaw?

The thing that made Boris Diaw so much fun is that his game did not match his looks. As kids, we’re all taught not to judge a book by its cover, but in sports, we often stereotype players into positions and roles based on their physical measurements. Diaw did not look in shape — or even interested in playing sports — but when he played (particularly in Mike D’Antoni’s offense) he nearly revolutionized the point-forward position.

While no one really fits that description physically, there is one piece of the puzzle in Atlanta that is often overlooked despite proving time and time again that he is one of the team’s critical pieces. That player is Kevin Huerter.

Huerter’s rookie year was mostly overshadowed by Young, especially during the latter’s second-half surge. Yet, the wing steadily improved all season long. In the final two months, Huerter averaged 11.3 points per game and shot 37.6 percent from 3 on 5.3 attempts per game.

He’s filled his body out over the summer and pledged to be more aggressive attacking the basket. He showed that he was a great backcourt partner for Young, and Atlanta should be doing all it can to make sure those two are in sync and together for the remainder of their careers in Atlanta.

3. Which Hawks player from the 2000s is the best comparison for Cam Reddish?

Going back through the storied history that is the 2000s Atlanta Hawks, the player that is the best comparison for rookie wing Cam Reddish is none other than DerMarr Johnson. Like Reddish, Johnson was a 6-foot-9 wing who could handle his own with the ball in his hands.

Johnson was with the team for just two seasons, but in that time he displayed enough potential to entice Hawks fans into believing that he could be a key cog of the team in the future and the present. A neck injury sidelined him for the 2002-03 season and the next time he was on an NBA court he was playing for the New York Knicks.

The hope is that the talent and potential are the same, but that Reddish chooses to stay with the franchise longer than just two years. In high school, Reddish was a one-man wrecking crew. His peers even crowned him as the toughest player to guard. We didn’t get to see that side of him at Duke, but injuries and a miscast role are most likely the reason why.

Reddish and fellow rookie De’Andre Hunter enter the league with big expectations, but the biggest area where they are expected to make an immediate impact is on the defensive end. The Hawks were sorely lacking for wing defenders last year and they took both of their first-round picks inside the top 10 of the 2019 NBA Draft.

The Reddish we saw at Duke was a tantalizing perimeter defender and the hope is that skill translates immediately for him. It didn’t click for Johnson in the end, but Reddish is much further along at this stage than Johnson ever was at any point in his career.

4. Who do you stan, Alex Len or Damian Jones?

Alex Len had a career resurgence last season with the Hawks. He spoke on the record multiple times about how things in Atlanta ran much differently than the upside-down world the Phoenix Suns operate within. With that change brought Len the opportunity to showcase more of his game than we ever saw during his time in the desert.

The biggest change was that he shot (and made a fair amount of) 3-pointers. His ability to space the floor opened the court up even more for Young and Collins and forced rim protectors away from the paint.

All of that is why the right answer to this question is to stan Damian Jones. We got a taste of what Jones could bring to the table when he was the Golden State Warriors starting center for just 24 games. He tore his pectoral muscle and missed the remainder of the regular season. What stood out during that time is how effective the former Vanderbilt center was when he shared the floor with Stephen Curry. In 11 games before Curry got hurt, Jones had 22 dunks and 12 alley-oops. After the two-time MVP went down, those totals dropped to 13 dunks and two alley-oops.

Though Young will be the first to tell you he’s more Steve Nash than Curry, he is a floor-spacing ball-handler that will stretch the defense in similar ways. If healthy, Jones could get another shot to show that he’s just scratching the surface of what he could become. Atlanta has been able to turn things around with past castaways, and Jones might be the latest member to receive a boost from taking the Midnight Train to Georgia.

5. A year from now, how are we feeling about Trae Young?

In a year, Trae Young will have solidified himself as one of the promising up-and-coming star players in the NBA. At the start of his rookie year, he experienced a shooting slump from the perimeter and people were quick to pounce on him and try to tear him down.

Well, he bounced back in a major way to finish the year and he resembled the player that set the NCAA ablaze in his one season at Oklahoma. His final 3-point field goal percentage of 32.4 looks disappointing, but from January onward, it jumped to 35.3 percent after a slow start.

If he can bring his overall shooting numbers up across the board then the naysayers won’t have much left to nitpick on the offensive end.

Young has an outside shot of making it to the All-Star team — as long as his team can win games — and if he does that, his status will reach another level. All-Star selection, playoff appearance, it could all happen for this group, but they’ll need Young to lead them there.

Even if they don’t surpass baseline expectations, Young has enough talent to ensure that the narrative around him changes for the better by the end of the season.