The NBA season has featured a number of newsworthy stories, but arguably none is more surprising as the Atlanta Hawks, who last night moved ahead of the the Raptors for the top seed in the East. The Hawks are now a half-game up at 24-8 through 32 games. Nobody saw this coming, so what is enabling this team to turn heads and become what seems to be a real factor in the NBA?
A Healthy Al Horford
The biggest reason the Hawks are in a better place this season is that Horford is healthy. This is the piece the Hawks cannot afford to lose. He missed more than half the season last year and the Hawks failed to reach the .500 mark, falling to 38-44 after a solid start to the season. They fought valiantly in the playoffs but it was evident they were a brick short of a load.
Horford’s numbers are not spectacular, but they reflect the Hawks’ virtues as a team. Horford is averaging almost three assists per game as a big man, which is among the best at his position. He averages almost 15 points and seven rebounds on a team that doesn’t need to have one huge scorer. Horford is an efficient player, hitting 53.1 percent of his shots. He is not a superstar but he is an All-Star and a cornerstone player who makes teammates better.
Team Defense
The Hawks are giving up an average of 97.3 points allowed per game, which is good for third-best in the NBA. Not only that, it’s the best among the top eight teams in the East and second in the East behind only the Indiana Pacers. That’ll be important in the playoffs.
The Hawks had been a finesse team in previous seasons but head coach Mike Budenholzer – a former assistant to Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs – has given Atlanta a new level of attention to detail on defense. The Hawks have proved to be very effective in that part of the larger task of basketball, and it’s a central reason for their success this season. When a team works hard, it can become a 10-5 road team as the Hawks are. When a team doesn’t take possessions off on defense, it can create a positive point differential of nearly five points, second-best in the East at this point in the season.
Sharing The Ball
The identity of the defending champion San Antonio Spurs is one in which the ball moves freely and constantly among all five players. This point has certainly taken root in Atlanta where the Hawks don’t allow the ball to stagnate or fall into a black hole in the low post. The Hawks force defenses to rotate and chase, keeping passes half a beat ahead of the opposition. Atlanta is third in the NBA in assists per game with 25.6. That’s a lot of communally produced baskets. That means guys are hitting shots when they receive passes, but it’s more a commentary on how passes create and facilitate shots for this team. Good teams do not have a lot of assists by accident. This happens for a reason.
Threes Please
We saw the Hawks have plenty of success in the postseason last year because of their three-point sharpshooting and it’s carried over into the regular season. They are tough to handle at times as big men like Mike Scott and Paul Millsap can hit the three, so when they line up at the four and five positions, the Hawks can spread the floor with five three-point shooters. Not many teams can do that.
So far this season, the Hawks are hitting 9.2 threes per game, which is best in the Eastern Conference and seventh overall in the NBA.
