This season’s trade deadline was a moment of truth for the Atlanta Hawks. At that point, they were 31-24 and fourth in the Eastern Conference. They reportedly fielded offers for Al Horford, an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season, as well as Jeff Teague who’s been their starting point guard for five seasons now. In the end, Horford and Teague stayed, and no blockbusters materialized. The move was shipping out seldom used backcourt players Shelvin Mack and Justin Holiday for Kirk Hinrich, doubling down on continuity.
So far, it’s worked out just fine.
Since the deadline, Atlanta is 10-6 with two of those losses coming at the hands of the Golden State Warriors. They are outscoring opponents by an average of 7.0 points per 100 possessions, trailing only the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat, and allowing just 96.0 points per 100 possessions which has been the second-best defensive efficiency in the league over that stretch. All those numbers looked even healthier before their 15-point loss to the Washington Wizards last night.
The easy narrative is that the Hawks bet on themselves and are now cashing in on self-confidence. They believed in themselves and that, somehow, they would find their rhythm. That collaborative vibe is exactly what Paul Millsap highlighted as the answer for their recent surge after a win over the Denver Nuggets, telling Peachtree Hoops, “We’re a rhythm team — we strive to find that. We struggled earlier trying to find that rhythm. Now, we’re a better defensive team than we were last year.”
Last season, the Hawks were one of the biggest surprises in the league, running out to the best record in the Eastern Conference with a flowy, egalitarian offense. The were the Golden State Warriors offensive equal, if not in talent, then in synchronicity, generosity, and execution. Everyone worked together, knew their spots, when to move the ball, when to shoot. The roster for this season was largely the same — DeMarre Carroll swapped out for Tiago Splitter (who barely played and is done for the season) and a larger helping of Kent Bazemore and Thabo Sefolosha. But the missing ingredient hasn’t been Carroll’s presence, all due respect, it’s been the synergy. They haven’t been able to recapture that five-guys-moving-in-harmony magic that made them so special.
Until now, I suppose.
The results are not quite as good. Millsap is right, their defense has been much better recently than it was last season, but their offense is still towards the bottom third of the league, even during this recent run. Kyle Korver has started to look better and Horford’s three-point percentage has been above 40 percent. The ball is moving a little bit quicker, Teague and Dennis Schroder have done a little more orchestration and a little less fumbling.
But nothing has been definitive enough to answer how we weight 16 games of excellence against 55 of games of just pretty good. Since the trade, Hinrich has hardly played at all. The only real rotational additions for this surge are Kris Humphries, who was signed after being released by Phoenix, and Tim Hardaway Jr. moving up from the end of the bench. Hardaway has been pretty good, Humphries something less than that.
It’s also open for debate how sustainable the defensive performance is. The Hawks have continued to allow their opponents plenty of three-point looks. Their opponent three-point percentage since the trade deadline is 29.2 percent, lowest in the league by nearly four percentage points. However, opponent three-point percentage has be shown to be mostly random noise — good three-point defense really shows up in limiting attempts, not in percentage. This narrow thread — opponent three-point percentage and, more broadly, opponent effective field goal percentage — is really the only place there has been a change in their defensive numbers, they are fouling, forcing turnovers and hitting the defensive glass at roughly the same rate as they were earlier in the year.
Combing through the granular details leaves the perception that Atlanta has simply gotten a little bit lucky. The sample is small, the offense has been a little more precise, their opponents have missed a few more shots than we would expect and, consequently, Atlanta has won a few more than we would expect. The thing is, the Hawks can’t shake the memory of last season.
For a few months, their system was damn near perfect, and so was every part within it. The parts are the same, the system is the same. Once you’ve seen all those tumblers line up, all those widgets on all those gears slide into place, once you’ve heard that machine make beautiful music, you can’t help but be haunted. It’s easy to think that if you can just muster the patience, all those pieces will work themselves back into alignment, that the machine will sing again.
This may have been why the Hawks stood pat the deadline — not so much confidence that they were certain or even likely to improve, but the knowledge that if they found their stride they could be good enough to make an on-the-fly rebuild irrelevant. What this Hawks team can do, what we saw them become last year and what they might be rounding into right now, is the magic that every other team (sans Golden State and San Antonio) is chasing.
Make no mistake, somewhere in this collection of pretty good players and complementary pieces there is a hypothetical Eastern Conference champion. It will take a few lucky breaks (it always does) but the ceiling of this Hawks team is not that far off from that of the Toronto Raptors, the Miami Heat, the Boston Celtics, or, most importantly, the gear-grinding jalopy that is the Cleveland Cavaliers right now. It doesn’t matter that Atlanta’s talent is wrap-around depth instead of lofty pinnacles. They have been more, vastly more, than the sum of their parts. They’re creeping in that direction again.