Is Taurean Prince the Best Player on the Hawks?
By Chris Guest
Though the first few months of the season were filled with inconsistent, up-and-down performances, second-year wing Taurean Prince has transformed into the Atlanta Hawks’ most important and best player.
The franchise has struggled mightily in the first year of a complete team rebuild, but after some ugly performances earlier in the season, The Prince That Was Promised has put up some gaudy stats since returning from the All-Star Break.
The Hawks have put the ball in Taurean’s hands much more than they did in his rookie season, and the returns have been promising.
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After a rookie season in which he played 981 total minutes in 59 games and averaged 5.7 points, 2.7 rebounds and 0.9 assists in 16.6 minutes per game, TP is putting up career numbers across the board. Prince leads the Hawks in total minutes (2111) and minutes per game (31) ahead of point guard stalwart Dennis Schröder.
This season, with a much heavier scoring burden placed on him, Taurean is drilling 38.8 percent of his treys on a team-high 5.4 attempts per game. That percentage is the third-highest on the team, behind only Mike Muscala’s 40.2 percent clip from deep and Kent Bazemore’s impressive 39.4 percent clip.
Prince’s durability has been astounding, as he has missed not one minute of action this season due to injury, illness or any other such issue, and is the only player on Atlanta’s roster that has appeared (and started to boot) in all 70 of the Hawks’ games.