Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell ... The NBA season is right around the corner. To get you ready, we've put together pop quizzes. Pencils ready? We continue our Pop Quiz series with the following question ...
What exactly are the Hawks going to be?
Joe Johnson is gone.
That statement isn't nearly as devastating as it should be for a player leaving his team after having signed a $100-million-plus contract. It's more of a "Oh, OK." Johnson makes for a fascinating discussion among the most hardcore of hoopheads because he's somehow too overrated to be underrated and too underrated to be overrated. He's simultaneously overrated and underrated and yet never accurately rated. But the result is the same; he's gone from the Atlanta Hawks.
What's left is a team that you can make the argument as being terrible or pretty good and have a strong argument for both. But instead of trying to figure out how good they're going to be, or even how they're going to be in general, what about what they are? What's the identity of the Atlanta Hawks?
They have a strong post presence. Josh Smith, when he's not inexplicably taking long twos, is an incredible post player, skilled, nimble, and strong as an ox. The LeBron James comparisons are not insane, provided they come with the "poor man's" modifier. Al Horford is constantly discussed as needing to play power forward. Yet he has excelled at the center position over the years and is a tremendous post player, most notably in passing. The Hawks have been known to grind it out, and they could certainly build such a model, working inside-out to the shooters that they obtained in Anthony Morrow, Kyle Korver, and DeShawn Stevenson.
But they can also run. Smith is powerful-nearing-unstoppable in transition, and Jeff Teague is an absolute speed demon. Korver is a master of the transition spot-up, and they have the athletes to get out and run. They can be an up-and-down team.
Teague has all the talent in the world but has too often deferred to the isolation sets of Johnson and Smith. Smith can take over a game but settles so much it's a running joke. Lou Williams can light up the scoreboard like few others but overall struggles with efficiency.
They have shooters, slashers, post players, athletic players, skill players, playmakers, play finishers and strong defenders.
So why do we still feel like this team could be a bit of a mess for long stretches?
The answer to that might lie in another question: What would this team look like with Mike D'Antoni at the helm? Or Stan Van Gundy? Or Flip Saunders? Or even more traditional current coaches like Mike Brown, Dwane Casey or Rick Carlisle?
And that does a disservice to what Larry Drew has accomplished with this team. Remember that the Hawks made it out of the first round with Drew two years ago and had more than a fighting chance against Boston last year, beset by just as many if not more important injuries than the Celtics.
He has taken them to a higher level and has them win consistently. Their national television appearances are nightmares, which help to perpetuate the myth of their terribleness. But overall, this has been a strong team.
They just seem to lack imagination and creativity. Drew has created a mid-playoff-seed model that can be likened to a factory approach. They do their job, deal with their inefficiencies, produce in bulk and dump the toxic waste out the back. Defend, create turnovers, grind out wins.
And maybe that's better than the approaches of the guys listed above. But with the Hawks, you wonder if they'll try once again to be non-descript, to have an identity that is largely defined as just "basketball team." There's potential to stretch the imagination with this roster and the freedom of low expectations. If Drew can shrug off the isolation tendencies while keeping the defense stiff -- and throw in just a little bit of imagination and expansion to the offensive side -- the Hawks could really surprise.
If not, this will be your standard Hawks season, best fit with a positive word and a shrug and a quick change of subject.
