"It Starts With Those Five Guys": The Hawks Are Leaning Into Their Youth

With the All-Star break behind them, the Hawks will rely on their young core even more heavily to close the season.

When the Hawks reconvened in Atlanta at the tail end of the All-Star break, Lloyd Pierce summoned Trae Young, Kevin Huerter, John Collins, De’Andre Hunter, and Cam Reddish for a meeting at the team’s practice facility. As the six men discussed where each player fits into Atlanta’s future and how they might grow together, Pierce showed the numbers on how they have fared on the court and identified the unit’s key strengths and weaknesses. Players spoke up to offer insights and suggestions on how they could get the most out of the Hawks’ final 26 games.

As much as anything, the meeting clarified the team’s priorities. Atlanta has staked much of its future in that group and will continue to do so over the next six weeks. “Any opportunity we can to steal some minutes and gain some valuable opportunities to see what those guys look like, we’re gonna do it,” Pierce said.

For most of the season, that unit -- the “core five,” as Pierce calls it -- wasn’t available as players dealt with injuries and Collins was suspended for 25 games. But as they’ve logged more time together in recent weeks, Atlanta’s young players have produced decidedly positive results, posting a sterling 116.0 offensive rating and plus-6.7 net rating in 262 possessions. “We honestly see those numbers as being the floor,” Huerter said. “We’re gonna get better.”

Their greatest advantage is the ability to space the floor around Young and Collins in the pick-and-roll, and it isn’t difficult to see how they could blossom into one of the league’s most dynamic offensive units. All five players have been capable shooters since Collins returned from suspension, which makes Young even more dangerous with the ball in his hands. The pressure he applies at the point of attack forces opponents into uncomfortable choices, and he’s a master at producing efficient shots at the rim and from beyond the arc.

“We’re gonna be an explosive offensive team moving forward, starting with that core five of guys,” Pierce said. “If that’s our floor offensively with that crew, let’s get better at it.”

In time, the Hawks could also have enough collective playmaking not only to augment their existing advantages, but to unlock new ones -- namely Young’s off-ball shooting ability. He ranks third in the NBA in catch-and-shoot 3-point percentage among players with 50 such attempts, but spends so much time with the ball in his hands that he hardly ever gets to exert his off-ball gravity. Pierce envisions running more sets with Young coming off screens and spotting up, and wants to allow Huerter and Reddish to handle the ball more often. While Atlanta has shot unsustainably well from the field (including 56 percent between 14 feet and the 3-point line), it attempts 38 percent of its shots from beyond the arc and over 10 percent from the corners when the core five plays together. That group has hit nearly 42 percent of its 3s. What might those numbers look like when the team’s best shooter has easier shots to feast on?

“How do you grow Trae? You take him to an area where he’s already excelling at a tremendous rate,” Pierce said. “So it’s the balance of empowering and growing Cam and Kevin and ‘Dre, and also taking advantage of the skill set that’s there that’s kind of hidden.”

The greatest challenge for the Hawks will be surviving on the other end of the floor. Atlanta’s offensive ceiling is high enough that it won’t need an elite defense, but the Hawks must still be passable on that end. Atlanta has one of the worst defenses in the NBA this year and must improve significantly just to reach mediocrity. Young’s defense at the point of attack is perhaps the worst of any starting guard in the league, which puts enormous strain on Collins and Hunter to clean up on the back line -- a job for which they aren’t yet suited.

The Hawks have struggled regardless of the personnel on the floor, but opponents shoot nearly 66 percent on and take 44 percent of their shots at the rim when Collins plays center. Atlanta is optimistic he’ll develop into a sturdier anchor, but it will take more than just physical tools for that to happen. “That’s not Rudy Gobert back there, so we’ve got to grow John to be quick, be in anticipation mode,” Pierce said. “He’s gonna have to use his quickness, he’s gonna have to use his versatility, he’s gonna have to use his athleticism.”

Even then, it’s unclear whether the Hawks can defend well enough to compete for a championship with Collins and Young bookending them, especially if Hunter isn’t the defender Atlanta hoped he’d be when it drafted him. Collins’ limitations will require more support from the defenders around him; Huerter, Hunter, and Reddish must all become stronger, more versatile, and more disruptive, and Young simply has to compete harder on that end.

“He ain’t gonna get any bigger, so get peskier, get nastier, you get a little more physical,” Pierce said. “That’s how he has to approach it, and more importantly, what it does is it tells his teammates he’s in that fight and he wants to be in that fight and he embraces that fight.”

The lack of size in the Hawks’ young core also hurts them on the glass, where opponents earn second chances almost at will. Huerter, Hunter, and Reddish all grab fewer than four defensive rebounds per game, which simply won’t suffice against conventionally-sized opponents. “If we’re going to play that group any kind of minutes together, those three guys have to become better rebounders,” Pierce said. “Because it’s a glaring issue for us right now.”

Clint Capela should help shore up those defensive weaknesses, though he has yet to play for the Hawks since the Rockets traded him earlier this month. Capela will miss at least the next seven games with plantar fasciitis in his right heel, but how the Hawks integrate him into the rotation will be among the most fascinating subplots of their final 26 games. Theoretically, he should slot in cleanly with Young as a vertical threat in the pick-and-roll and help fortify one of the NBA’s flimsiest defenses. The Hawks just won’t know for sure until he takes the court. “He’s a double-double, he’s a rim-runner, he’s an unbelievable pick-and-roll threat at the rim, which ties right into what we do,” Pierce said. “So we don’t have to see it to know it’s there.”

In some ways, the Hawks’ two primary goals for the rest of the season are at odds with one another. They want to see just how Capela fits with Young, Collins, and the rest of their core, but they must also invest the requisite time in those five players for them to properly blossom. The more Atlanta evaluates one type of lineup, the less time it has to look at the other. It’s not quite a catch-22, but it will require some managerial agility from Pierce. (The Hawks will likely have a high lottery pick in June, so their nucleus will grow beyond the five young players already on the roster.)

Atlanta has lofty aspirations for next season, and the process of making a leap into the playoffs in 2021 begins now, even if the result of each individual game has no bearing on the broader outcome of the season. The best the Hawks can do is position themselves for a time when they can finally coalesce and take the next step in their rebuilding process.

“That’s where we are,” Pierce said. “When we get to [year] three, we really want to make that jump, and it starts with those five guys. We added a guy that we know what he brings, and that’s gonna be tremendous for our guys.

“The other guys are right there, and we’re gonna have some fun.”