For the first time in nine years, the Atlanta Hawks will be starting the season without Trae Young on their roster. They got used to life without him after trading him midway through last season, and flourished in the final few months -- pushing the eventual NBA champions further in a series than any of their four opponents.
Now, the Hawks will look to build upon their success. But after some offseason trades and draft acquisitions, the team looks a little different than the one we saw last season. So, here is what their starting lineup and nightly rotation will look like heading into training camp.
Projected Hawks starting lineup and rotation after trading for Lu Dort and Aaron Wiggins
STARTER | POSITION | BENCH |
|---|---|---|
CJ McCollum | PG | Kingston Flemings |
Nickeil Alexander-Walker | SG | Luguentz Dort |
Dyson Daniels | SF | Aaron Wiggins |
Jalen Johnson | PF | Mouhamed Gueye |
Onyeka Okongwu | C | Jock Landale |
All five starters -- CJ McCollum, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Dyson Daniels, Jalen Johnson, and Onyeka Okongwu -- from last season's sixth-seed team are back. Considering that this group had the third-highest point differential of any lineup that played at least 300 minutes together, you'd think that head coach Quin Snyder will start with this group out of the gate.
That means that the two NBA Champions joining them from the Oklahoma City Thunder -- Luguentz Dort and Aaron Wiggins -- will not start out the year in the opening five. If one of them was to weezle their way in to the mix it would probably be Dort, who has basically started every game of his career up to this point (97.9 percent, too be exact).
Kingston Flemings, who the Hawks selected with the eighth overall pick, probably won't be thrown under the fire right away, either. Instead, unless he looks really behind the eight ball in training camp, I think he'll be the team's first point guard off the bench. He'll get to learn from a pros pro like McCollum, while also testing his own merit in 12-15 minute bits a night.
Jock Landale and Mouhamed Gueye will provide backup depth at the four and five spots and round out the rest of the team's projected ten man rotation. However, the Hawks are deeper than most teams in the league, and I wouldn't be surprised if they start out the season playing more than ten minutes a night in order to give guys like Corey Kispert, Dorian Finney-Smith, Asa Newell, Henri Vasaar, and Zuby Ejiofor some tick.
Are the Hawks good enough to compete in the East?
As we mentioned before, the Hawks finished last season with the sixth-best record in the Eastern Conference. During the second half of the year, they were even better than that, posting the second-best net rating of any East team. Given how young their core is, you'd think they'd be able to continue to climb the standings into fringe contention status, right?
Not so fast. First off, the Hawks, while very good during the second half of the year, benefited largely from how many teams were intentionally trying to lose games down the stretch. The NBA's new anti-tanking policies are going to make sure that isn't the case this go-around.
Many of their contemporaries have also made big acquisitions that trump the incremental improvements the Hawks made. The New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, and Miami Heat all have better teams than the Hawks on paper. That is without factoring in that teams like the Orlando Magic, Detroit Pistons, and Charlotte Hornets could usurp them if things go their way.
At the end of the day, the Hawks are likely to be in that 7-10 range in the standings this year, fighting for a playoff spot in the play-in tournament. However, Atlanta has done a great job of building a flexibile finance sheet and hoarding a notable amount of assets. They are in line to make a play on the next disgruntled star. Depending on the player, this could vault them up the conference heirarchy.
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