ESPN Releases First BPI Projections For the 2024-2025 Season: Where Do the Atlanta Hawks Rank?

ESPN's Basketball Power Index (BPI) released its first projections for the 2024-2025 Season

Oct 8, 2024; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Atlanta Hawks forward Jalen Johnson (1) brings the ball up the court against the Indiana Pacers during the first half at State Farm Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

The 2024-2025 NBA Season is fastly approaching and projections are flying coming in for how the season is going to go. One of the latest projections is from ESPN's BPI.

What is BPI? I will let ESPN explain it.

"ESPN's NBA Basketball Power Index (BPI) is a measure of team strength developed by the ESPN Analytics team. BPI is meant to be the best predictor of a team's performance for the rest of the season. BPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. BPI accounts for game-by-game efficiency, strength of schedule, pace, days of rest, game location and preseason expectations."

Right now, BPI has the Hawks finishing with a 37-45 record and tying with Charlotte for the No. 10 spot in the Eastern Conference behind Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Miami, Indiana, New York, Orlando, and Chicago.

This is in line with most preseason projections for the Hawks. The win total for this team is at 36.5 right now.

BPI is projecting the Hawks to have the No. 14 offense in the NBA. Even if you are lower on the Hawks and what they can be this season, I feel like that might be just a little low. By himself, Trae Young is good enough to generate a top offense in the NBA and the Hawks have been near the top with him running the show. With Dejounte Murray no longer on the team, Young is going to have the ball in his hands a lot and even with questions about the level of shooting around the team, I think the Hawks are going to have one of the best offenses in the NBA and I would be a little surprised if Atlanta does not finish in the top ten.

Let's talk about the defense.

BPI is projecting the Hawks to have the third worst defense in the NBA. Atlanta had one of the worst defenses in the NBA last year, but they have made concerted efforts to change that this season. In the Dejounte Murray trade, the Hawks got back Dyson Daniels and Larry Nance, two players who are noted as good defenders. Daniels is not just a good defender, but I think that he is an elite defender who can be the perfect backcourt teammate with Trae Young.

It is not just Daniels though. The Hawks are a bigger team and have more length with the addition of Zaccharie Risacher on the team and both Jalen Johnson and De'Andre Hunter are solid wing defenders. Clint Capela is not the rim protector that he was in the past, but he is still a good defender. Nance is not really a rim protector but is still a good defender. I am not at all trying to suggest that the Hawks are suddenly going to be a top-ten defense, but I don't think they will be the third-worst in the NBA.

Projections are projections and with the season starting in less than two weeks, we are going to see in short time how accurate these predictions might be.