Two convincing losses to the defending NBA champions further illuminated how far the Atlanta Hawks are from reaching that plateau.
Before getting to the main point, it’s important to point just how unlikely this run of Golden State Warriors dominance has been.
Think back to 2011, when Mark Jackson took over as the head coach of an at-the-time laughingstock of a franchise that was allergic to playing defense and had an oft-injured kinda-sorta star point guard leading the team. If you told anyone around that time that Golden State would become the next great NBA dynasty, this is probably the reaction you would’ve gotten.
Of course, everything ultimately worked out for the Warriors. Through a number of shrewd moves — jettisoning analytics pariah Monta Ellis, building around Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, replacing Jackson with Steve Kerr, etc. — the team became the poster child of the modern 3-point driven game and established a supremacy that has made them the latest team to fill in the blank for the “Is ____ ruining basketball?” take.
Among other factors — such as the 2016 cap spike that allowed them to sign Kevin Durant — the drafting and developing of two of the best 3-point shooters this sport has ever seen in Curry and Thompson has served as the main fulcrum behind Golden State’s success. Even as other teams try to replicate it, the chances of acquiring such talent (in Curry’s case, once in a lifetime talent) is about as likely as winning the Powerball.
Despite those long odds, the Atlanta Hawks are hoping for a similar jackpot. They brought in former Warriors assistant general manager Travis Schlenk to run the team and shortly after, he used both of his first round picks on collegiate sharpshooters Trae Young and Kevin Huerter.
Upon their arrival, both players drew the somewhat lazy Curry and Thompson comparisons (especially Young), which made the “Warriors-East” strategy all the more obvious.
Thus far, it has, uh, not worked out well for Atlanta. This team is bad at every facet of the game: offensive rating (30th), defensive rating (23rd), 3-point offense (29th), 3-point defense (30th), and turnovers (30th), according to NBA.com.
That said, the process has produced some promising signs; as of Dec. 4, the Hawks rank sixth in passes per game, fourth in potential assists, and second in both “open” and “wide open” 3-point attempts. However, the team has failed to convert many of those good chances, placing 27th in open 3-point percentage and 29th in wide open percentage, per NBA.com.
Conversely, Golden State ranks 16th and second in those same categories. It doesn’t take much research to figure out why that’s the case; the Warriors have prodigious 3-point shooting talent. The Hawks do not — yet.
This chasm is best exemplified in the two games these teams have played this year, with the Warriors taking both to secure the season sweep.
The first game, a 110-103 Warriors win in Oakland on Nov. 13, saw the supposed Splash Brothers 2.0 put up a combined six points on 3-for-16 shooting against a Golden State team that had neither Curry (injury) nor Draymond Green (suspension) available for the game (although Young had a good night as a facilitator).
With Curry returning to the lineup for Monday’s rematch in Atlanta, the contrast between the two teams was far more noticeable. In his second game back, Curry dropped an efficient 30 points on 10-of-17 shooting with equally effective performances from Thompson (27 points on 19 shots) and Durant (28 points, 10-for-13 from the field).
As for Young and Huerter? Well, Young scored 20 points … on 8-of-20 shooting with only three assists, compared to seven turnovers. He also missed all five of his treys. Huerter laid a goose egg on 3s too, but played fairly well as he finished with 10 points and was a +1 when he was on the floor.
Still, for an Atlanta franchise that wants to shape those two in the image of Curry and Thompson, they clearly showed that there’s still plenty of work to be done with them.
You don’t need to be a blogger or a ranting hot take artist to know that the Warriors are a far superior club compared to this Atlanta team. Your own two eyes will show you that. Huerter is still rounding into form after an offseason hand injury, while Young takes many of the same shots that Curry does with far worse results — he’s been awful on pull-up 3s as well as open and wide open 3s so far.
But as some of the stats show, this could bear some fruit if the Hawks play a little better on defense and start to make some of the open 3s that often clank off the rim for them. It probably won’t happen this year as the Hawks appear destined for the lottery again, but they have a small chance to make something that was so improbable the first time around happen again.
As these games against the Warriors (and most of the other good teams) have shown, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.