The burgeoning Atlanta Hawks are finding their groove on both sides of the floor
By Dylan Carter
Even through poor 3-point shooting, the Atlanta Hawks are limiting mistakes.
Just as it’s an adjustment for Trae Young to play alongside another quality facilitator, Dejounte has been forced to change his approach by moving away from the read-and-react style of his former head coach, Gregg Popovich. To ease the transition, Atlanta is giving each of its lead ball handlers a ton of pick-and-roll opportunities, which benefits everyone involved.
No team averages more possessions for pick-and-roll ball-handlers than the Atlanta Hawks right now, which is a testament to the styles of its backcourt. In turn, the team averages the second-most points per game from P&R ball handlers (23.8) thanks to the savvy in-between game and screen navigation from Murray and Young, as well as backup guard Aaron Holiday.
Even though it may seem like these ball handlers are dominating the basketball, they’re also putting the bigs in a position to thrive. In different ways, John Collins, Clint Capela and Onyeka Okongwu are all ideal pick-and-roll partners. Now that they have two star pocket passers leading the charge, they’re each getting highly efficient looks at the basket and covert at a 63.2% rate — the fourth-best in the league.
Unfortunately, this hasn’t translated to the long ball in the slightest. Some of the role players are nailing their threes, but Young and Murray are shooting 13.3 triples on their own each game at just 30.9 and 32.1% respectively. As a team, the Hawks make only a third of their catch-and-shoot 3-pointers at the third-worst percentage in the league.
They try to make up for the poor shooting with aggressive driving in transition, where they post the NBA’s third-most points per possession at 1.25.
There’s certainly room for improvement, but this team is making the most of what it has, which is evidenced by its first-place ranking in points per touch. They average the fewest total touches per game because they know which players are best suited to handle the rock and when to let them cook, which goes a long way in the regular season. Notwithstanding, it’d be a lot more difficult to survive like this if the defense hadn’t come such a long way.