Atlanta Hawks: How Poor Fit Can Turn Elite Talent Average

System Failure?

During the regular season, all five starters tended to produce decently while spacing the floor for everyone else, instead of there being three All-Stars performing disproportionately. Role players such as Kyle Korver and Kent Bazemore were effectively nearly as important as their All-Star teammates. 

The issue with that, however, is that you are then consistently relying on limited players to produce. During the regular season, this will generally result in enough wins against mediocre and bad teams and in enough fortunate wins against better teams to result in a good record. 

In the playoffs, however, those players are often marginalized offensively in favor of their more versatile teammates, since as a team you would rather have the ball in the player’s’ hands who can excel in the most situations. 

I would argue that the Hawks weren’t prepared to do that, so they kept playing the same way. Even in their first round victory against the Celtics, the effects of this were obvious. 

The Hawks had three players in their All-Stars who could conceivably create their own shot against focused defenses compared to the Celtics one in Isaiah Thomas (unless you count Evan Turner, who functioned very well last year as a secondary playmaker, but he should probably not be one of the three best point creators on your team), and it is very arguable that the Hawks would have lost the series if the Celtics had Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, and Kelly Olynyk all been healthy.

They lost two games and got close to losing a third, even though the Hawks had much more on paper talent than the Celtics had at the time. 

Theoretically, their big men should have destroyed the ones on that Celtics roster and should have resulted in each game being blown open. The only decisive advantage the Celtics was at the point guard position with Isaiah Thomas over Jeff Teague, but they both fall into the category of point guard that playoff teams are basically expected to start at this point. 

Thomas did statistically have more of an impact last year than Teague, but this disparity by itself should not be able to almost be enough to win three playoff games with the other personnel and health disparities at hand. And yet, in my opinion and in the opinions of others I have read or heard, the Celtics lost the series with their preponderance of missed open looks and absence of their merely above average shooters due to injury, more than the Hawks beat them with their higher quality talent. 

Based on the requisite talent on each side, that probably should not have been the case.

I believe that to be a direct result of their system and the placement of their talent positionally. As a result of ball movement, they often in the regular season (and against Boston) got away with multiple possessions that ended with a look for Kent Bazemore or Mike Scott in favor of a Horford of Millsap shot. 

Systemically, it makes sense, either Teague would generate open looks for players like Bazemore or Scott, or Horford and Milsap could use their skills to pass out of the post to three-point shooters or to cutters taking advantage of their defender’s mistake. 

This doesn’t always work, however, when you’re trying to maximize talent against maximal talent. For example, if Horford has the ball in the post, a common play would be to make a pass out to a moving Korver or Bazemore who are two competent three-point shooters. 

However, what happens if the help defender is able to rotate and contest a shot before it is released? It either results in a contested or blocked attempt, or more likely the player is forced off the three-point line. What if the player, like Bazemore or Korver, is not especially adept at creating plays off the dribble? 

To compound that, what happens if the defender who rotated after the help correctly is in general a great defender, such as LeBron James? Most likely, either a bad shot is taken, a turnover is forced, or many precious seconds off the shot clock have been wasted and a player who is in a position to shoot efficiently only gets the ball to do so with very little time left.  

Argue for ball movement all you want, but most opposing coaches would rather allow a contested Bazemore or Teague three than a Millsap isolation against a disadvantaged defender. With the Hawks premier talent filling up the front court and point guard spot, there was little room left on the wings. 

Considering how the wings were the players generally benefitting the most from Teague’s penetration and big man post passes, this often led to a struggling Atlanta offense whenever it was confronted by a disciplined defense.

Atlanta had an equal opportunity system that was great for allowing efficient execution and open shots for any given player on the floor. The constant motion, screen setting and cutting combined with a distaste towards selfish play maximized the ability of limited players. 

Choosing to fit players into a system’s style than rather than fit a system towards a player’s style has its advantages. Smaller players often grow into it. Unfortunately, one could argue that bigger players have to shrink to fit in. 

Eventually, players of both kinds grow use to this, and a player playing outside of what they’ve grown accustomed to will most likely result in systemic confusion. 

A perfect example of this occurred in Atlanta’s Game 3 against the Boston Celtics, which is the one game in that playoff run in which one of the Hawks’ “star” players had the numbers of a star. Paul Millsap scored 45 points in Game 3 against the Celtics in the first round, and this explosion only showed the Hawks’ unfamiliarity with a single player taking full advantage of a positional disparity. 

Millsap was a marvel to watch; scoring at will while doing so almost effortlessly. His teammates were witness to this Boston massacre (too soon?) and instead of trying to set him up for even more efficient shots, they often just got out of the way and watched him go to work. Ball movement often completely gave way to stagnant isolation play, without many attempts being made to put Millsap into even better positions to succeed. 

More egregiously, Millsap barely touched the ball during the second half of the fourth quarter and barely at all during overtime; scoring four points in the last six minutes of the fourth quarter on three shots and no points at all in two shot attempts during the five minute overtime period.

Choosing to fit players into a system’s style than rather than fit a system towards a player’s style has its advantages. Smaller players grow into it. Unfortunately, one could argue that bigger players have to shrink to fit in

For the entire game, the Hawks had a very in rhythm player who was dominating his competition, and in the final minutes they instead went back to a reliance on their system and turned to their other players. 

That reliance resulted in three points produced during the entire overtime period. Fortunately for the Hawks, their seeming reluctance to truly maximize their positional advantages wasn’t enough to sink them against a banged up Boston Celtics team.  Against a team like the Cavaliers, however, a team’s best players have to play to their best and the Hawks learned this the hard way. 

Teague more often than not put himself in a position to succeed at his best and was often put in positions to do so by his coaching staff, but as discussed, the best you could hope for from a point guard like him is that he isn’t a minus for your team. 

To actually win the game, you need players like Al Horford and Paul Millsap to win their matchups. As we discussed, that is not as simple a proposition as one may think. So clearly, the issue at hand was roster construction. Despite the presence of three All-Stars, their roster placement and roles in the system essentially mandated that their two best cancel eachother out into producing like role players, and the third  may bring you to the plate but doesn’t swing you the home run. 

Compounding all this, the supporting players could not optimally capitalize off the space generated by said All-Stars against the highest levels of competition. These issues mitigated the efficacy of many of the team’s key players; turning an on paper great team into a merely good one. 

Unfortunately for the Atlanta Hawks, good is not nearly good enough in the NBA. While they boasted a lot of premier talent, a lackluster fit ultimately lead to a failed marriage.

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