When the Hawks take the court at State Farm Arena Tuesday for their first exhibition game, they’ll be mindful of how they dish out minutes within their rotation.
“I think you know, looking at all the games over the course of the preseason, we have some guys that had longer summers that we want to be conscious of their minutes,” Hawks coach Quin Snyder said Monday. “We’ve practiced hard, we want to be aware of that. Guys always come out of this period of preseason with some bumps and bruises that you want to be conscious of. So really, you try to get as much out of these games as you can and get better.”
Wing players Bogdan Bogdanovic (Serbia) and Dyson Daniels (Australia) played well into the summer after handling national team duties. Onyeka Okongwu and Seth Lundy had medical procedures over the summer and have spent the offseason rehabbing and regaining strength.
The Hawks have also held intense scrimmages over the six days of training camp. So, Snyder said that the coaching staff and the health performance staff have remained in communication to make sure that Okongwu and those with bumps and bruises remain on track.
The team looks forward to the chance to finally go out there and compete against another team.
“I think you’ll just see,” guard Trae Young said. “I don’t know if it’s one thing I’m looking forward to showcasing. I think we got a lot of young guys, new guys to the team who can bring a lot of different abilities to the game. And then it’s hard to, like, really judge on what we do in practice, because we practice so much with each other. We know everything about each other. We know where the next reads are. So it’s gonna be fun going against somebody that we haven’t practiced against or is gonna know our sets and things like that. So it’ll be fun to see what we can do.”
Snyder shared last week that the team will take a flexible approach to their rotations as it figures out how best it functions. The Hawks have added a lot more size and versatility on the wing, which has increased its depth significantly from last season.
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