There’s nothing like a little friendly competition between teammates.
This season, the Hawks’ big men have faced off against each other in a 3-point shooting contest following practices. They’ve upped the ante with some friendly trash talk as they look to push each other to improve upon their skills, as the Hawks look to stretch the floor potentially.
“(David) Roddy can’t hang with me, and I done legally changed Onyeka’s (Okongwu) name to ‘Off-yeka.’ He can’t shoot,” Hawks forward/center Larry Nance Jr. said to reporters after practice Thursday.
Nance has mastered the art of trash-talking thanks to his father Larry Nance, who surrounded him with a locker room-like atmosphere when he was a kid. For the Hawks veteran, the competition and jawing between teammates help to build a bond and camaraderie that will help the communication on the court in the long run.
“Really if nothing else, it just helps build a bond, where something later could happen,” Nance said. “We’re in a game. I need to yell at (Okongwu), you know, ‘O, I need you as a low man.’ And he knows, like, we built camaraderie, built jokes. We’ve got a foundation of, like, where I can say something if he can say something to me. And we both know that he’s coming from a place of all trying to win.”
The competition picked up again Saturday, with Okongwu taking Nance’s words to heart. He looked to redeem himself and downed Nance in their rematch.
“I mean, look, you know how like you when you want somebody to keep playing the game with you, you gotta let them win,” Nance joked with reporters Saturday. “Every once in a while, you know? So, Roddy came over and shot. He hasn’t won yet. I’m 4-0 against Roddy. O, came down, I was 3-0 and now I’m 3-1 against O. So I just wanted to keep playing. So I got to toss a bone every now and again.”
The Hawks, of course, can take advantage of some strong shooting from their bigs. This season the Hawks will look to move the ball more and play with a faster pace. Having more knockdown shooters will allow them to keep defenders off-balance with more options to generate scoring.
The team averaged the seventh-most 3-point attempts per game in the NBA last season, with 37.7 attempts per contest. They made 36.4% of those attempts per game.
With a few extra days of practice in, the Hawks had the chance to work through more of the things that coach Quin Snyder wants to add to their game plans.
“It was good,” Nance said. “We got a good few solid practices, and Coach Q got to implement some things that we may not have without giving that plan to that practice time. So, I think overall, it was good for us.”
The Hawks still have three exhibition games to play before the regular season begins Oct. 23 at home against the Nets. They’ll face the 76ers on Monday, before playing back-to-back games against the Heat on Wednesday and the Thunder on Thursday.
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