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The minds at Ball Don’t Lie – Kelly Dwyer, Dan Devine, and Eric Freeman – have your teams covered. All 30 of ‘em, as we countdown to tipoff.
Kelly Dwyer’s Palatable Exercise
The idea that the Atlanta Hawks could be twice as fun to watch in 2013-14 as they were the previous season while winning just as many games is a sensible one, and it’s the perfect glass half-full approach in the wake of a rather dull if somewhat successful playoff run under former coaches Mike Woodson and Larry Drew. Woodson and Drew’s offenses were drudgery to watch at times, and though the team made the playoffs consistently from 2008 to last spring, it was more or less a joyless affair. Watching Hawks games in person during their first round ouster against Indiana in April left you wondering if the team’s contracts actually expired on April 17 – Larry Drew was barely audible, Josh Smith was disengaged, Al Horford was clearly frustrated.
Horford is still around, as is point guard Jeff Teague, (who signed a restricted free agent contract with the Milwaukee Bucks that Atlanta matched), but the rest of the rotation thankfully bears little resemblance to the one that the Hawks stuck around Joe Johnson back in 2011-12.
Longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant Mike Budenholzer is finally in charge of his own team, hopefully bringing some of San Antonio’s spacing secrets along to a team that could feature a litany of stretched out players moving and shooting in glorious unison. Providing, of course, that Budenholzer can hack it as a head man – as some of the more respected assistants in this league (Mike Brown, John Kuester, Lawrence Frank) have flamed out recently when attempting to steer the team from the top.
Should he get through to his players, Budenholzer will have a sound enough rotation to approximate or eclipse last year’s win total. The backcourt is the question here, as this season will go a long way toward determining whether or not Teague can continue to build on his promise and start to consistently overwhelm opponents, and whether or not the injured Lou Williams can contribute at his typical Lou Williams-level as he returns from an ACL tear. The loss of Josh Smith’s go-to mid range jumpers will help the offense breathe, but big men Horford and signee Paul Millsap will need help from the guards. If Atlanta wants to have a chance in the ever-improving East, Teague especially is going to have to come through with a breakout year.
Of course, old habits die hard, and Teague has spent the entirety of his NBA career working within the semi-successful offensive muck of the Woodson and Drew regimes, so it may take a while for him to start to pounce as needed. When and if he does, though, the spacing on this team will be fabulous. Williams may need until December to be cleared for five-on-five contact in practices, but with Kyle Korver floating around and Millsap and Horford in place, there will be screening, and there will be shooting.
Depth is a concern, even with Elton Brand, DeMarre Carroll, and the (currently out) Gustavo Ayon on board. While rookie guard Dennis Schroder looks like an absolute steal at the 17th pick, he’s still a rookie point guard making a transition between leagues. He’ll need a year.
A year is all Danny Ferry needed, in determining that the Smith and Drew-led Hawks weren’t much to bank on. As it stands, the Hawks should sustain their playoff streak while setting up for a 2014 offseason that will see them well underneath the salary cap even with the rotation (minus Brand) in place. A star-sized NBA free agent could join a playoff team in an enviable city and not have to worry about being surrounded by a litany of players making minimum wage. Ferry’s run isn’t over.
The old guard’s run in Atlanta is. And while these Hawks won’t be putting the fear of a first round fluster in the hearts of some of the East’s bigger names, the team will be entertaining to watch, and with some outlet toward a brighter future that was never going to be in place with Joe Johnson’s various contracts on the books.
For now, that’s enough. Now hurry back, Lou. And listen to your new coach, Hawks.
Projected record: 45-37
Tune In, Turn Up with Dan Devine
While only a handful of NBA teams each season harbor serious hope of hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy come late June, all 30 come equipped with at least one reason to keep your television set locked on their games. Dan Devine shares his suggested reasons for the season ahead.
Tune into the Hawks for … the first draft of a new chapter in Hawks history.
If you squint, you can kind of see it -- the establishment of San Antonio: East. Granted, brand-extending spinoffs might not be especially exciting, but they sure can be viable; remember, “NCIS: Los Angeles” perennially ranks among TV’s highest-rated shows, and “CSI: Miami” and “CSI: New York” ran a combined 19 seasons. (Meanwhile, “Parks and Recreation” gets quietly scuttled. Great job, everyone.)
More than a couple of pieces fit the profile, starting with ex-Spurs player and executive Danny Ferry running Atlanta’s front office and longtime San Antonio assistant Mike Budenholzer taking over coaching duties. Plus, the on-court charge will be led by a smart, skilled big man who impacts the game on both ends in ways that don’t generate highlights, and a hiccup-quick young point guard most comfortable in the pick-and-roll, who does his best work in transition, who can make defenses scramble as a drive-and-kick facilitator and who’s yet to really be cut loose. Sound familiar?
No, Al Horford and Jeff Teague aren’t Tim Duncan and Tony Parker -- remember, we’re squinting -- but as bookends and building blocks, you could do a lot worse in miming San Antonio’s model (Just for laughs, check out the per-minute numbers and statistical profile for Parker and Teague through four pro seasons. The comp might not be as far off as you’d think.) There’s a third component to that Spursian success, though, and Atlanta’s also got a dynamic scoring/playmaking reserve guard capable of injecting instant offense and pairing with the two top guns to do damage.
Again, I’m not drawing a one-to-one comparison to Manu Ginobili, but before Lou Williams tore the ACL in his right knee in January, lineups in which he shared the floor with Horford and Teague scored at a rate that would’ve outpaced the Spurs’ No. 7-ranked unit over the course of a full season. The Hawks outscored opponents by 3.7 points per 100 possessions during those 437 minutes -- that “net rating” comes in just south of the Western Conference finalist Memphis Grizzlies, and was significantly better than Atlanta’s full-season mark. Williams is good, better than many fans might know; getting him healthy and back in the mix will matter.
There’s a similar commitment to the long ball, too. The Hawks finished fifth in the NBA in 3-pointers both made and attempted last season -- San Antonio ranked seventh in both categories -- and posted the league’s seventh-best deep-shooting accuracy, three spots behind the Spurs, even with the since-departed Josh Smith shooting 30 percent on 201 tries. The perimeter barrage will likely continue, with re-upped sniper Kyle Korver and rising sophomore John Jenkins leading the charge in opening things up for Horford inside and cashing in on Teague’s penetration; it may be schematically reconfigured, though, as Atlanta tended toward longer above-the-break 3-point shots (fifth-most attempts in the NBA) more often than the shorter/higher-value corner 3s (ninth) that’s been such a staple of the Spurs’ attack.
There’s a pair of new frontcourt starters picked up from Utah on the cheap, Paul Millsap and DeMarre Carroll, whose comparatively quiet but consistently positive impact seem straight out of San Antonio central casting. (Regularized adjusted plus-minus pegged Millsap as one of the league’s 10 best players last season, and Carroll shines in the creation and extension of possessions.) There’s even an inexpensive veteran four/five (Elton Brand) in a sort-of late-period Antonio McDyess role, and an infusion of international blood, with reserve centers Pero Antic and Gustavo Ayon spelling Horford and exciting rookie Dennis Schröder backing up Teague. (Hasta luego, Lucas Nogueira. We eagerly await your arrival.)
The analogues aren’t perfect, and this mix won’t replicate the consistent contention San Antonio has enjoyed these past 16 years. In fact, given the Hawks’ shortcomings (notably at small forward) and the depth of talent atop the East, it’s likely that this year’s model produces the same mid-40s win total and No. 5 or 6 seed to which Atlanta has become accustomed. The result will be arrived at differently, though, with Horford and Teague stepping to the fore and a pared-down salary structure affording the Hawks the chance to build something bigger in the future while continuing to compete, if not contend, in the present. We could remember this season as the start of something new, and perhaps very good, in Georgia.
Honorable mentions: Schröder, who set SummerLeagueonfire and whose combination of playmaking prowess and opportunistic defense have some invoking Rajon Rondo comparisons; whether Williams – who is playing four-on-four but whose return date remains unclear – can be the same sort of force he was while placing second in Sixth Man of the Year voting in Philly; how an Atlanta defense that finished among the league’s top 10 in points allowed per possession over the past two seasons adjusts to the loss of Smith.
Eric Freeman’s Land of Confusion
NBA analysis typically thrives on certainty, a sense that a trained expert sees the truth and points fans towards the key issues and most likely outcomes. Yet, as any seasoned observer of the league knows, events often unfold in unforeseen ways, with players performing against predictions or outside of the realm of presumed possibility altogether. In fact, it may sometimes make sense to dispense with the pretense of predictive genius and instead point towards those issues that as yet provide no simple answer. In Eric Freeman’s Land of Confusion, we investigate one player per team whose future remains vague.
For several years, the Hawk’s frontcourt tandem of Al Horford and Josh Smith posed serious problems for the opposition. They also often appeared to coexist in a yin-and-yang relationship, with Horford serving as the steady performer and Smith playing the mercurial sparkplug. Horford thrived in this relationship by every conceivable metric, but it’s also fair to say that his image benefited from their contrasting styles. Whenever Smith made a poor decision, Horford looked more like a model professional.
Paul Millsap is a very different player than Smith, so it would be wrong to speak of him as a full replacement. However, Millsap does take over Smith’s prior role as Horford’s most high-profile frontcourt partner, to the point where it won’t be terribly surprising to see them spoken of as an imposing tandem. The difference, though, is that Millsap is much closer in temperament to Horford than to Smith. They won’t throw each other’s strengths and weaknesses into sharp relief.
This new relationship isn’t magically going to cast Horford as less than he previously was, because he’s still a great player and worthy All-Star. Yet it’s also possible that playing with Smith caused many observers to avoid the rampant nitpicking and granular comparisons that befall many of the league’s best players. Perhaps, through no fault of his own, Horford is about to get criticized for being the same player he’s always been.