The Hawks are exactly where we expected but look nothing like we thought

How real is Atlanta's new identity?

The Hawks are currently riding a five-game win streak that included consecutive wins against the league-leading Cleveland Cavaliers and a victory in Milwaukee that stopped the Bucks’ own seven-game streak.

It’s an impressive stretch, but the crazy part? They’re doing it with defense.

Since November 26th, the start of this five-game winning streak (including three games against elite offenses, mind you), the Hawks rank third in defensive rating.

Third! Defense! The Hawks!

Last I checked, this is still the same team that gave up 133 points to the Wizards early in the season, but things have changed. It was never clearer than the fourth quarter of their win over Milwaukee. The Hawks averaged less than a point per shot in the ultimate period and took six fewer free throws than the Bucks. They still won the quarter 20-17.

Even this unexpected defensive surge isn’t happening the way you’d expect. The Hawks have been an excellent turnover-forcing team overall this season, thanks largely to Dyson Daniels (I went into more Daniels detail in naming him my Perimeter Defender of the Quarter), but they have been below-average in that regard during their win streak.

There is, of course, some shooting luck — but that cuts both ways. In the five recent games, Hawks’ opponents have only shot 33% on triples — but the Hawks only made 35%. (That partially makes up for the abysmal fortune the Hawks had for the first part of the season, as opponents shot nearly 41% from deep before the winning streak started).

Teams won’t always shoot that poorly, but it’s easy to construct a narrative that fits the recent numbers. Atlanta has a ton of length and energy on the roster. Rising star Jalen Johnson, rookie Zaccharie Risacher, and Daniels create a forest of grasping limbs for opposing ballhandlers and wings to navigate. It’s difficult to find Trae Young (trying harder on defense since Quin Snyder came to town, but still very bad) amidst all those trees. Even when opponents do get an open look, it’s not quite as safe as they think:

Opponents naturally want to lunch on the Hawks’ weakest link, but there’s a little bit of a trap to hunting Young. The Hawks have the second-worst points per possession allowed to ballhandlers out of the pick-and-roll, and they also give up that play type (and the similar dribble hand-off) at a very high rate.

But, if you recall from my recent deep dive on play types in the league, ballhandlers shooting out of the pick-and-roll is actually the league’s least efficient action overall. Atlanta's (and virtually every team’s) defensive principles prefer to give up the floater or the midrange in the pick-and-roll versus virtually any other shot. Even if it’s easier to do against Atlanta, it’s still a below-average possession overall.

In other words, teams can expose Young, and it can still lead to suboptimal offense. This is what it can look like in practice. Young gets drawn into the pick-and-roll and beat handily, but it still ends in a tricky floater as the other Hawks pack the paint:

That’s not a bad look! NBA players have trained their whole lives to take and make open shots, and muscle memory takes over when they get a clean line of sight to the basket. But over the course of an entire game, taking five not-bad looks instead of five good ones can be the difference between winning and wondering what happened.

Schematically, the Hawks will switch all their wings, although they prefer to keep Young out of the action and center Clint Capela home in a drop. Their trademark is activity. Johnson, Daniels, Risacher, and even sixth man De’Andre Hunter of late are constantly scanning for opportunities to inject chaos into opposing offenses. They’re eager helpers, sometimes to a fault, and have a lot of faith in their ability to cover a whole lot of ground. If nothing else, effort is rarely a question. Look at how much distance Risacher has to cover for this monumental block:

Although we all enjoy talking about the wings — they’re young and fun, two things that NBA fans love! — Capela deserves his flowers, too. Every year, rumors that he’ll be traded and/or surpassed on the depth chart by Onyeka Okongwu buzz around like repetitive, annoying mosquitoes, and every year, he grades out as an above-average drop rim-protector and vacuumer of rebounds who is simply too valuable to smash with a flyswatter, no matter how frustrating it is when he misses another bunny (there are a lot of parallels here with Phoenix’s Jusuf Nurkic, actually).

Okongwu is the off-speed pitch, the help-side shotblocker who can move his feet on the perimeter a little bit. The two are tag-teaming the center position while playing about equal minutes, and while neither is elite (Okongwu’s pick-and-roll defense has left me a little cold for years), there’s value in having different looks to throw at offenses.

For all that positive talk, the Hawks are still giving up more threes than anyone in the league, which is rarely a recipe for long-term success. But teams have also generally made them, and the season-long defensive rating is still 13th, thanks to turnovers and solid rim protection. It’s reasonable to think the Hawks’ defense could settle in around 10th going forward, which opens the door for Atlanta to make some noise if their offense can get in gear.

And they might be on the right path; the offense ranks seventh in this five-game streak (although just 15th on the year — worse than their defense). Like many people, I expected the Hawks to be an offense-first team, but most of their rotation has been colder than a Magic City beer. De’Andre Hunter has been lights out of late, Johnson is decent on mediocre volume, and deep rotation guy Garrison Matthews is a 46% shooter this season, but the team is suffering through poor marksmanship from nearly every other notable player.

The ballyhooed Daniels has been unable to find his touch, hitting just 29% from downtown (although he’s at least putting up four attempts per game, which is still low but more than ever before). Risacher has been extremely aggressive, putting up nearly nine triples per 100 possessions — that’s a great sign for his long-term development, but he’s also sub-30% from deep on the season. The usually reliable Bogdan Bogdanovic is barely netting a third of his attempts, and worst of all? Trae Young is batting like Marcell Ozuna; 30.6% (on huge volume) is by far the worst mark of his career. Young is only shooting 21% from deep during this five-game win streak!

Some of those guys will start hitting shots (Bogdanovic and Young, most likely), and when they do, the rest of the offense will follow. The team is also fifth-worst in turnover rate over this win streak; that can be cleaned up to a degree (and will further benefit their defense, too).

There are the bones of a really promising system here. Atlanta is top-10 in both rim attempts and corner threes. The Hawks run like hell — second in pace this season, per Inpredictable. They have a bevy of ballhandlers and passers, meaning most of the rotation can grab-and-go.

The Hawks are third in assists and potential assists per game; they spread the ball around like butter on toast. But Young and Johnson deserve special mention.

For all the attention on Dyson Daniels’ attempt to get three steals per game, Young is chasing an arguably even more interesting statistical benchmark. He’s currently averaging 12.0 assists per game. If that holds, it would be the most by a player in 30 years. John Stockton was the last to crack 12 dimes, and he did it in each of the first five years of the 90s. Nash, Rondo, Westbrook, the Point God himself — none of those guys had a full season with 12 assists per game.

It’s widely accepted that Jokic is the best passer in the league, and I’ve made that argument myself. Beyond his uncanny vision and feel, his height gives him sightlines few can access. But nobody possesses as much sheer passing talent inch-for-inch and pound-for-pound as Young. He’ll hit the lob, give defenders haircuts with bullets to sneaky cutters, throw off-handed skip passes right to a shooter’s pocket (Young’s ambidexterity as a passer is underrated). Most fun of all, he’s a master of improvisation:

Next to him, Jalenn Johnson has emerged as a legitimate point forward. He takes full advantage of his height to launch pinpoint outside-inside dimes. When he’s feeling a little cheeky, he’ll launch a little hook pass that reminds me of Karl-Anthony Towns’ signature move (although Johnson is having a better passing season than Towns has ever had):

I sang Johnson’s praises before the season, when I predicted he’d be an All-Star. He’s been everything I hoped for, a well-rounded force who can impact the game in a multitude of ways. He’s averaging 20/10 and more than five assists, and he’s an above-average positional defender, too. He’s one of the few players equally comfortable on both ends of a pick-and-roll, and he’s even improved his three-point volume and accuracy each year of his career: 36% on 4.5 attempts per game ain’t Steph Curry, but it’s a functional weapon.

Risacher is still working on his marksmanship, but he’s already a savvy vet in nearly every other aspect of the game. He came into the league a strong defender, quick thinker, and instinctual cutter who knows how to catch even the best defenders off-guard:

Thanks to an early-season injury to De’Andre Hunter, Risacher has started nearly every game this season, but it might’ve worked out better for the Hawks this way. Traditionally, Bogdan Bogdanovic has led the Hawks’ bench mob, but Hunter has been their best reserve of late. He’s been good enough off the pine this season that the Hawks would be wise to consider it a permanent move. This season, he’s averaging a career-high in scoring (18.7 points per game!), true shooting, steals, free-throw attempts, three-pointers attempted, and three-point percentage, all while playing the fewest minutes of his career. While Risacher starts, Hunter usually closes, which seems to be working just fine.

Fun fact: the Hawks are 7-0 when Hunter scores at least 15 points and 5-11 when he doesn’t play or scores fewer than 15.

To summarize: The Hawks’ shooters can’t hit shots. Their defense is better than their offense, and they start a rookie. Atlanta is playing differently than expected. Yet, at 12-11, they’re more or less where consensus thought they would be.

Nobody has had higher highs or lower lows this season. Is this team capable of consistently playing like the one that beat the Celtics and the Cavaliers? Or is this team closer to the one that gave the Wizards their only two wins of the season?

Only time can tell. The most likely outcome is that the Hawks hover around .500 for most of the year and hope to avoid the play-in, notching some incredible victories and incomprehensible losses; basically, who they’ve been so far. But this isn’t really about this season. The team’s youthful core of Johnson, Risacher, Daniels, and Young (yes, I’m still including the 26-year-old with just one for-sure year left on his contract in their youthful core) has been a lot of fun and shown a lot of upside.

It is tempting to practice some catoptromancy and see a Young-captained top-five offense complemented by switchable two-way wings charging through the East in the not-too-distant future. Is that recency bias? Probably, but you know what the label says: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.