The Hawks will head into the season with an all-hands-on-deck mentality, especially when it comes to how they handle their “backup” minutes.
This season, the Hawks have several players whose skill sets overlap, leading to the team having fewer clearly defined roles. The Hawks will approach the season this way, especially when it comes to how they handle lineups when point guard Trae Young is on the bench.
After dealing Dejounte Murray to the Pelicans this offseason, the Hawks do not have a defined backup point guard. Since the Hawks have several players who can handle the ball, who can pass and who can shoot, that role could fall to at least three or four players.
“Trae, the way that he plays and what he does for our team, is unique,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said Saturday. “So, I don’t look at it as a positional thing where (we) talk about backup this. It’s the same way you look at a wing. Dyson (Daniels) is not Hunt’s (De’Andre Hunter) backup, Zacch’s (Zaccharie Risacher) not Dyson’s backup. Bogi’s (Bogdan Bogdanovic) not Zacch’s backup. Like you have players, and the most important thing is (how) the team functions. And that means, when I say functions, it’s successful.”
Last season the Hawks had several players, such as Young, Jalen Johnson and Onyeka Okongwu, miss games because of some long-term injuries. They had to turn to players like Kobe Bufkin (who also dealt with several injuries), Vit Krejci and Garrison Mathews as stopgaps when they ran into player shortages.
This season the Hawks have a little more rotational flexibility after they committed to adding more size and length in the offseason. That’s why the Hawks looked to run different lineups and combinations throughout the four exhibition games to get a better sense of what could work.
“It’s just going to depend,” Snyder said. “It can change game to game. It can change minute to minute. We still have to play defense. We still want whoever’s in there to dance the ball with the pass as much as we can and play team basketball. So, there’s primary ball handlers, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a secondary ball handler, given that it just, it’s not real complicated, but it isn’t like black and white.”
In the exhibitions, the Hawks ran combinations with Bufkin as the primary ball handler, paired with Bogdanovic, Krejci or Daniels.
“I think, especially when Trae’s out, we got to embrace the chaos and the playing with the pass,” Krejci said. “So, I think we’ve been trying to find that rhythm. Obviously, it’s going to take, take a little bit more time, but I think there’s a good intention there. We’re trying to play the right way, trying to play with pace and chaos and all those things.”
The Hawks also have Johnson, who often has kicked off the team’s plays in transition as a point forward of sorts.
They averaged 28.8 assists per game during the exhibition season, which allowed them to find the right looks even when the shots didn’t fall.
The Hawks open their season at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday against the Brooklyn Nets at State Farm Arena.
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