The Hawks continue to navigate the acclimation period of integrating three new players into the rotation. But they continue to show sparks of what that could look like when things finally click.
In Monday night’s win over the Heat, the Hawks received a huge lift from the second unit. From a nine-man deep rotation, the Hawks got 49 points from their bench, with Caris LeVert and Terance Mann combining for 30 of them.
“I thought our guys executed defensively really well, and it was really good to see,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said after Monday’s game. “You know, our bench was terrific. Guys are coming in ready to go. And Trae (Young) did a really good job managing the game late, particularly when they started to switch, pick them up.”
The Hawks’ second unit has been among the team’s strengths, but also one of its weaknesses. In some games this season, the Hawks have had to live or die by their bench. But more often than not, the Hawks received valuable production out of their bench players.
This season, the Hawks rank third in the NBA behind the Grizzlies and Warriors in bench points per game. With the addition of LeVert, Mann and Georges Niang, as well as the shifting Clint Capela from the starting unit, the Hawks still have a top-five second unit that has averaged 44.6 points per game in seven games.
But the Hawks players would be among the first to tell anyone that this new lineup remains a work in progress, with much room for growth.
“I feel like we can keep getting better,” Capela told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. “Once again, defensively, we’re able to get stops and run get easy buckets for everybody, myself included Caris, Terance, Georges. I mean, I feel like, those are the guys that know how to play, they’ve been in this thing long enough to know how to play, and I’ve started feeling better playing with them.”
Though Capela has played in only four games with the new guys, their veteran experience and emphasis on communicating during the adjustment period have been invaluable in making the new unit work.
“It’s a big difference because they don’t hesitate to communicate and figure it out. Situations whenever we caught up in something defensively, we able to figure it out quicker,” he said. “And that’s a huge plus for the match.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the thing that’s kind of bringing us together, is our communication and our experience,” LeVert added. “We’ve all played a lot of basketball. So, I think just getting on the same page has been a lot easier.”
The Hawks, though, still need to find a solution in the minutes when Young takes his rest. They just began to find a possibility with the new guys in the fold, leaning even more heavily on wing Vit Krejci to help with some of facilitating.
Krejci has been a solid conduit for keeping the ball moving and opening the floor in a way that could allow guys like LeVert, Mann, Dyson Daniels and Zaccharie Risacher to lean on their skills as cutters. But Krejci went down one game after the trade deadline with a low back fracture that sidelined him for anywhere from two to four weeks.
The Hawks wing has approached the earlier portion of the time frame that the team announced for reevaluation, with Monday’s game marking the second week since his injury.
With 24 games remaining in the regular season, the window to adjust to their continues to dwindle. But the Hawks have faith that they’ll figure it out.
“It makes it way easier whenever you have guys like Caris and Georges who are aggressive, and whenever they get the ball, they’re not hesitant at all,” Young said after Monday’s game. “And even T-Mann tonight, hit a big 3, and the one he couldn’t hit, he had another one to seal it, I thought it was a great shot. And (those 3 are) going to fall in because they know that they’re going to get those and they expect to get those passes. So the more we continue to play with each other, the more that those types of shots will go in.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
