Kent Bazemore shut down for season by Atlanta Hawks
By John Buhler
The Atlanta Hawks will be without shooting guard Kent Bazemore for the rest of the season. He suffered a bruised knee in Sunday’s loss to the Chicago Bulls.
This has been a year of tremendous growing pains for Atlanta Hawks basketball. After reaching the Eastern Conference Playoffs 10 years in a row, Atlanta is certainly bound for the NBA Draft Lottery. It seems that wins will be less likely the rest of the way, especially after their latest injury to starting shooting guard Kent Bazemore.
According to Michael Cunningham of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Hawks guard Kent Bazemore will miss ‘several weeks’ with right bone bruise.” An hour after that Tweet, the Hawks’ official Twitter account would confirm that Bazemore is shut down for the season.
Bazemore had played in and started 65 games for the Hawks. Though Atlanta is 20-47 through 67 games and has the third-worst record in basketball, this had been a solid year for the Hawks’ starting two-guard. Bazemore was averaging 12.9 points and 3.5 assists in 27.5 minutes per game. He had bounced back after a down year for him in 2016-17.
Bazemore had to leave Sunday afternoon’s game with the Chicago Bulls with an obvious knee injury. Atlanta would battle back behind starting small forward Taurean Prince’s 38 points, but it was not enough to secure a victory for the home team. Starting point guard Dennis Schroder was also held out in this game due to an injury.
Overall, this is right in line with what the Hawks wanted out of this season. Yes, losing one of their better players in Bazemore due to injury stinks, but Atlanta wasn’t going to sniff the playoffs in 2018. New general manager Travis Schlenk successfully convinced owner Tony Ressler that blowing the whole thing up was the right protocol for this team.
Atlanta had last picked in the NBA Draft Lottery in 2007. That year, the Hawks took power forward Al Horford out of Florida with the No. 3 overall pick. Two offseasons ago, Horford signed a multi-year deal with the rival Boston Celtics.
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Being without Bazemore the rest of the way will give head coach Mike Budenholzer more opportunities to get creative in the Atlanta backcourt. He seems to have found some good things in the frontcourt in the form of Prince, rookie John Collins and savvy veteran Dewayne Dedmon. However, Atlanta continues to get worked in the backcourt with great regularity. Losing Bazemore means Atlanta will struggle to win 25 games this year. That only increases the Hawks’ chances of winning the NBA Draft Lottery.