Ending practice Thursday with the group intact, given the NBA’s 3 p.m. trade deadline, the Hawks had a quick running joke: “Hopefully, everybody’s still here tomorrow.”
There was no cause for concern at shootaround Friday, with the Hawks electing not to make another move at the deadline and to keep the roster as it is.
Phones went off pretty much the whole day, but Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk is happy with the way the team is trending, 9-3 in the past 12 games. Plus, they made a move in mid-January by trading wing Cam Reddish to the Knicks, which relieved a logjam of minutes on a deep team.
“We feel good about the impact that had,” Schlenk said Friday of the Reddish trade. “Kind of have a set rotation now of guys, kind of know their roles. We looked at a lot of different stuff, but we’re comfortable with this group. We know this group has the ability to be successful, as we saw last year. And we want to give them that opportunity to prove it to the world they can do it again.”
The Hawks did it last year with a nearly identical roster, getting hot down the stretch of the season and making a run all the way to the Eastern Conference finals, but can they do it again? Starting out 17-25 and playing dreadful defense, it didn’t look like it. But those numbers have inched up over the past few weeks.
The Hawks are No. 27 in defensive rating (113.1) for the season but No. 11 (110.5) the past 12 games, dating to Jan. 17. The Hawks defeated defending champion Milwaukee that day, sparking a seven-game win streak.
“Total effort,” Schlenk, who had publicly called out the Hawks’ lack of defensive effort, said Friday. “You’re seeing guys make that second effort, whether it’s coming over to help or contesting a shot on the perimeter, I just think you’re seeing a more connected group on the floor, to steal one of (Hawks coach Nate McMillan’s) words. It takes five guys to guard in the NBA. Players are too good. You can’t guard guys one-on-one in this league.”
The roster only recently stabilizing an developing more chemistry after injuries to start the season and COVID-19 upending the Hawks from December to January was another big factor in Schlenk not making a move at the trade deadline.
“We got off to a slow start,” Schlenk said. “That’s not a secret. We had some guys start at the beginning of the season who were coming off injury, weren’t 100%, and obviously we had the COVID thing that hit us really hard. I think at one point we had 11 guys in protocols. But if we were five or six games better, which isn’t a lot of games, we’d be in a much different spot than we are. But we’re here and we have to accept it and we have to dig ourselves out. So that’s what we’re going to try to do and hopefully do.”
As of Friday afternoon, the Hawks are No. 10 in the Eastern Conference standings, five games back from the No. 6 seed. Their goal is to avoid the play-in tournament (seeds 7-10) and climb up to sixth place. That’s a steep climb, as they’ll need to win at a high clip and will need some help from the teams ahead of them (Toronto at No. 6, Boston at No. 7, Brooklyn at No. 8, Charlotte at No. 9).
But, now this group knows they’ll be around for the final stretch of the season, and can focus on purely that.
“I’m on board with that,” McMillan said of the roster staying as-is. “Our guys, they’re starting to play better basketball, and now we’re going down the stretch and we know we’re gonna be here. We go down the stretch trying to win this race to get into the playoffs.”
The Hawks do have one open roster spot, including Solomon Hill in the Reddish trade and receiving Kevin Knox and a first-round pick in return, and will explore their options to fill it, whether that’s a young guy they can bring on via 10-day contract, or a veteran that becomes available that would be a good fit. But they won’t be haphazard with it, Schlenk said, since they don’t want to throw off this group’s chemistry.
Even though the Hawks didn’t do anything Thursday, Schlenk has seen trading Reddish open up some minutes for other players, which seems to be helping them on this stretch.
“I do think that plays a factor, when everybody knows their role and can kind of know what their spot is,” Schlenk said. “When you have too many guys, and everyone feels like they should be getting minutes, it can create issues. We had a ton of depth last year and we have a ton of depth this year, but it seemed like last year, we always had somebody hurt, so it never really became an issue and this year, we’re finally having everybody healthy which is great, but then you have to have minutes for everybody, too.”
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