Over the next 10 weeks, CBS Sports' Eye On Basketball will take a team-by-team look at the 2015 NBA offseason. We continue with the Atlanta Hawks.
The Hawks sort of fell apart late last season after a ridiculous, dreamlike 19-game winning streak in December and January. All of their starters won Player of the Month, and then most of them struggled in some capacity in the playoffs. DeMarre Carroll, the only one who wasn’t an All-Star and the only one who raised his game in the postseason, got hurt at the worst time and then left in free agency. The cheapo contracts he and Paul Millsap signed in the summer of 2013 wound up creating a problem: the Hawks had to choose one of them. On the first day of the moratorium period, they chose Millsap.
Other than that, we're looking at pretty much the same team as last year. Will the continuity outweigh the fact that Atlanta still seemingly lacks a go-to scorer? We examine.
Key Additions
Paul Millsap (re-signed), Tiago Splitter (trade), Tim Hardaway Jr. (trade), Justin Holiday (signed free agent), Walter Tavares (2014 draft-and-stash), terrible new neon uniforms
Key Losses
DeMarre Carroll (signed with Toronto), Pero Antic (unsigned as of 8/7)
How does Splitter fit in?
The snarky answer: not as well as Carroll. The Hawks had to say goodbye to a great defender in Carroll, a guy who plays hard as hell and hits open 3s and lets them play small and is loved in the locker room and … well, that is just not an ideal situation at all. Splitter is a big dude with no range, so this changes the way this team will work.
The optimistic answer: I mean, he played for the Spurs for five years. Outside of Tim Duncan, no non-Hawk big man was going to come in and understand Mike Budenholzer’s philosophy as deeply. Splitter is a quick passer for a center and can contribute in this particular offense by screening for shooters and finishing inside. He also addresses Atlanta’s need for size, toughness and rim protection. This is a good match despite his lack of a perimeter jumper, just as long as whoever is playing small forward can stretch the floor.
Can the Hawks approach last season's success?
This is where we need to talk about the small forward thing. Carroll’s gone, and I guess Thabo Sefolosha will start? He did that for years with the Thunder, and he improved his 3-point shot over time, but it’s just not the same. Sefolosha made 32 percent of his 3s last year, and his meh reputation on those shots is more important than the numbers. Even when he was shooting above 40 percent from long range in OKC, teams dared him to shoot in the playoffs.
The Hawks are so precise on offense that even a little bit of drop-off in spacing will be noticeable. Just think of how the postseason went. Even against the Brooklyn Nets -- the Nets! -- they had a much tougher time finding their usual looks whenever they had a non-shooter come in off the bench. If losing Carroll means that is the status quo, uh-oh.
The hope here is that Atlanta has already found its next Carroll in Holiday and/or Hardaway. Carroll famously joined the team on a two-year, $5 million deal. Anybody could have had him, but it was the Hawks who helped him remake his jump shot and become a $60 million man. Same with Hardaway and Holiday. Anybody could have had them this summer, too. Time to see what this development staff can do.
Do they have any chance of getting past Cleveland this time?
Honestly, ask that development staff. There’s a huge hole on this team now, which is extra evident because it seems like Budenholzer has an almost religious devotion to shooting. While Hardaway is the better shooter today, he is a million miles away from helping you defensively, so the ready-made defender — Holiday, with his length, anticipation and effort — probably has a better chance of panning out.
Holiday is 26 years old, the same age Carroll was when he signed in Atlanta. He shot 35-for-109 from deep last year, not too bad, and his 82 percent mark at the line bodes well. Who’s to say he can’t be the steal of the summer, just like Carroll was?
The best-case scenario is that the Hawks recapture their midseason magic. There's no reason Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver (after he recovers from his two surgeries), Paul Millsap and Al Horford can’t get even sharper when it comes to playing off each other. While what happened most recently makes it easy to forget, there was something super special happening here. No one’s going to predict Atlanta will make it out of the East, but with Splitter and a little luck — Holiday being a gem, the Cavaliers getting hurt or stagnant — it’s possible. For two straight years, LeBron James has been beaten by great defensive teams that share, push and shoot the hell out of the ball. Sounds like the ideal version of Atlanta.
