How The Atlanta Hawks Stack Up Against The League’s Elite

While the rest of the Eastern Conference crumbles under a cavalcade of injuries and mediocre play, one thing has become irrevocably certain: all roads lead to Atlanta.

Currently sitting pretty at 47-12, a full 10 games ahead of the second seeded Toronto Raptors, the only thing the Atlanta Hawks are playing for, at this point, is home court advantage throughout the playoffs.

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The Hawks have been, by far, the best and most consistent team in the East — their record, metrics, and play on the court advocate their well-deserved praise.

At present, they house the league’s sixth-most proficient offense and the fourth stingiest defense. In addition, they’re third in eFG% (effective field goal percentage), second in Net Rating, and second in overall point differential, per NBA.com.

Naturally, there is a degree of standard error associated with statistics. In particular, situated in the East, approximately 60 percent of Atlanta’s games are played against substantially inferior competition.

As such, it is important to evaluate how the Hawks perform, as a team, when facing the league’s best.

Comparing the Eastern Conference Elites

With that being said, the following sets of data are aimed to compare elite teams’ on-court play when facing playoff caliber competition versus how they perform on a regular basis. In an effort to give “elite” a clear and concrete definition, we will exclusively measure teams currently sporting a winning percentage of over .550.

Without further to do, let’s first analyze how the East’s elites fare against one another:

Observations

Not surprisingly, the average net differential and net rating (per 100 possessions) of teams when facing stiffer competition is much lower than their season averages in both categories.

Interestingly, despite their up-and-down season, the Cleveland Cavaliers are the only Eastern Conference elite to perform at a higher level when going up against their surefire-playoff counterparts.

As well, the gap between the Hawks, the Cavs, and everyone else is becoming exponentially more drastic. Therefore, the battle between the second tier of teams, such as the erratic Toronto Raptors, the injury-riddled Chicago Bulls, and slumping Washington Wizards, will mostly come down to the luck of the draw and specific matchups.

Already this season, we have seen the Raptors beat up on the Wizards, the Wizards upending the Bulls, and the Bulls getting the best out of the Raps.

Meanwhile, other than a flurry of early-season lopsided losses at the hands of the Cavs and the Raptors, Atlanta has pretty much dominated the conference as the season has gone along. In particular, they are undefeated against the Bulls and the Wizards thus far.

The only Eastern Conference elite that seems to match up relatively decent with ATL is perhaps Toronto; given their ability to keep pace with the Hawks by going small, spreading the court, and giving their army of ball-in-hand creators free reign to bend Atlanta’s help conscious D via bombing an avalanche of threes and long twos — a sound strategy if you can’t beat the Hawks in the interior through offensive rebounds.

On the other hand, the Wizards are quite blatantly masquerading as a contender. If you take away their games against the Bulls, Washington would be 1-8 against everyone else.

Their archaic style of play — curling for long twos, playing two bigs at all times regardless of matchups, bottom feeders in 3-point attempts — causes the Wizards to get blown out most often times when facing teams with just as much talent and a coach that utilizes modern schemes.

Comparing The Elites Of The NBA

When expanding the sample of teams to the entire league, the talent discrepancy and imbalance between the two conferences become painfully clear. Explicitly, all eight Western Conference playoff teams qualify as an “elite” team under the aforementioned slated prerequisite.

Let’s take a deeper look:

Observations

Sure enough, the Hawks are one of only two Eastern Conference teams to post a winning record against the West’s elites, at 10-2 — the other team being, surprisingly, the Chicago Bulls.

The Bulls have seemingly managed to split all of their season series against the elites of the West. However, they have yet to play the Oklahoma City Thunder this year, or match wits for a second time with the Memphis Grizzlies and the San Antonio Spurs.

While, on the surface, it may look as if the East’s elites perform admirably when facing their Western Conference foes, most of their victories have come at the expense of the Los Angeles Clippers. In fact, the Clippers are currently 1-8 against the top five of the East.

It is also worth noting that Cleveland’s impressive differential numbers when facing the elites of the East free-falls incrementally when taking their encounters with the elites of the West into account.

Out West, the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies have been the two dominant pillars of the stacked conference.

Much like the East, however, the outcome of each playoff series will be highly dependent upon matchups. For example, the Warriors have crushed the Houston Rockets at every opportunity this season. Similarly, the Grizzlies match up quite well against nearly everyone within the conference, driven in large part by their non-conformative physical style of play.

In particular, though, the Grizzlies seem to have an inherent upper hand on the Portland Trail Blazers.

What Does All This Mean?

Overall, it is quite clear, even when taking into account the factor of competition, the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks are far and away the two best teams in the association this regular season.

The two conference powerhouses not only boast the best records among the elites, they both share the highest margin of victory and point differential when facing teams with similar aspirations. This is worth noting because point differential has historically been proven to be a better indicator of future success than pure winning percentage.

With that in mind, only five of the 13 “elite” teams sport a positive margin of victory and net rating when going up against their championship-contending contemporaries; the five teams are the Hawks, Warriors, Grizzlies, Cavaliers, and Trail Blazers.

While you may not need this thorough study to tell you the Cavs and the Hawks are the clear one-two favorites to come out of the East, the above sets of data serves as a concise predictor and confirmation for said assertions.

The Raptors, Bulls, and Wizards are merely side stories concerning the Eastern Conference playoff puzzle. Unless Chicago can enjoy a miracle and a clean bill of health, the result of their matchups will be inconsequential in the long run.

Where the West represents parity, fueled by competitive balance, the East remains the polar opposite — the conference finalists are all but determined.

*All stats current going into March 3’s slate if games

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