Is Taurean Prince the Best Player on the Hawks?

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.

With all that playing time, Prince has been honing his craft and improving his skills on the fly as one of the most important players on the Hawks’ roster. Throughout portions of the early season, Prince would have strong, double-digit scoring performances intermingled with tough nights in which he only scored 2-7 points despite big minutes loads.

Consistency is perhaps the most important indicator of a player’s talent level, and though Prince showed flashes before the All-Star Break, he was never able to truly “put it all together” and display his entire bag of tricks in the same game.

He did have a few strong games in which one segment of his skill set was highlighted: He obliterated an extremely weak Kings team with a career-high 8 assists and 4 steals despite only scoring 14 points in a November game, he notched career-highs of 30 against the Raptors in December and then one-upped himself with 31 against the Celtics in February.

Despite those strong showings, his 30-point outburst against the Raptors was sandwiched in between 11- and 12-point outings in which he shot a combined a combined 8 of 22. His 31-point showcase came after one of the worst games of Taurean’s young career against the Hornets in which he did not score from the field in 25 minutes and only hoisted 2 total field goal attempts.

That inconsistency was troubling for Hawks fans, especially after a strong playoff push at the end of the 2016-17 season for Prince, whose play was widely lauded as the best among all rookies getting minutes in those playoffs.

Even with so much variance in his performances, Prince was named as a replacement in the Rising Stars Game when the Bucks’ Malcolm Brogdon went down with a serious injury. Though he did not look great in that game (overshadowed by an incredible dunk from teammate John Collins), perhaps that exposure to All-Star weekend helped to re-focus The Prince That Was Promised and get him back on the right track for the rest of the season.

That has definitely looked to be case as Prince has come out like a man possessed since returning from the All-Star break, and one could certainly make the case that he has been the best player on the Hawks in that time frame.

After returning from the All-Star break festivities, Prince has been on a sizzling hot streak. TP has been extraordinarily confident driving to the rack, and his hyper-aggressive and oftentimes out-of-control line drives to the basket have been replaced by cautious and measured drives that work off a rather wicked crossover that has visibly improved since earlier in the season.

From the eye test, Prince has taken a clear step forward on the offensive end (and his activity on the defensive end has also improved). TP moves with confidence, and his sure-footedness and quick first step allow him to get the rim with ease.

Size and speed were never an issue and getting to the rim was commonplace for Taurean, but it was what he did when he got there that was a cause for concern earlier this season, as he seemed to get lost when driving into 2 or 3 or even 4 defenders. He would hoist up a difficult shot, or get it cleanly blocked by longer defenders.

Since returning from the All-Star break, Taurean has shown much better decision-making and court vision as a primary ballhandler, sometimes even running out the game clock with starting point guard Dennis Schröder on the bench. Such was the case in a tanktastic affair vs. the Phoenix Suns when Prince drilled a leaning, off-balance three-pointer to down a team whose record is even worse than Atlanta’s.

TP has also shown great recognition in the pick-and-roll, and his passing ability is markedly better than when he first arrived in Atlanta fresh out of Baylor University. He is also looking to hit the open man in transition, as this sweet no-look, ¾-court dish to John Collins on the fast break entails:

The stats back up this claim, and Taurean’s usage rate and assist rate have both shot up by 4 percentage points from 17.2 to 21.2 percent and 8.4 to 12.4 percent, respectively.

In the 11 games Prince has played since February 23^rd, the first time Atlanta played since the All-Star break, The Prince That Was Promised is leading the Hawks in minutes per game (31.7), points per game (20.5), steals per game (1.4) as well as three point makes (3.9) and attempts per game (8.7).

Taurean is shooting so well from deep, in fact, that those attempts rank as third overall in the league behind only Damian Lillard (10.0 per game) and James Harden (9.1 per game) and his 3.9 three-point makes per game are behind only Dame.

Not only he is he hoisting up plenty of deep tries, he is hitting those shots at an excellent rate as well. Since returning from the break, Prince is also fourth in three-point field goal percentage (at 44.8%) among players that have attempted more than 7 a game, behind only three-point luminaries Kyrie Irving, Eric Gordon and Stephen Curry.  That number puts him ahead of noted bombers James Harden, Devin Booker, Wayne Ellington and Allen Crabbe.

Prince has been reeling off immense scoring explosions, mostly fueled by his three-point shooting. In the month of March alone, Taurean has logged career-highs in three-pointers made on three separate occasions, headlined by an astonishing 38-point explosion versus the Bulls last Sunday in which he drilled an excellent 7 of 13 shots from deep (53.8 percent).

He matched that tally less than a week later and almost delivered a miraculous game-tying three against the playoff-bound Milwaukee Bucks, whose defense seemed nothing short of disinterested overall.

If you’ve watched the Atlanta Hawks all season, you’ve definitely seen plenty of Taurean Prince, as the only Hawk to play every game, he’s a major part of this team’s narrative. Though his defense remains a question mark, watching this young player improve in almost every facet of his game has been nothing short of a joy.

With John Collins on an even quicker learning curve, the Hawks have two clear-cut building blocks for the future of the franchise.

Prince’s recent run of games has been a revelation, and he almost looks like a completely different player. His on- and off-ball movement is crisp and the fluidity of his ballhandling is striking – especially compared to his driving ability early in the season.

He has turned himself into a real weapon in the pick-and-roll, as he has become adept at the drive-and-kick or finding the open roll man rumbling down the lane. If given any amount of space via a screen, Prince’s stellar outside shooting can crush any perimeter defense with ease.

Though the sample size is small, Prince is certainly playing as if he has put it all together and is fully developed as a player. Sure, his defense still needs a bit of work, but with a chiseled and toned 6’8”, 220-lb. frame, he projects to be a weapon on that end as well.

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With his all-around offensive skill set becoming consistent and steady, The Prince That Was Promised has a chance to be one of the better two-way players in the league in the coming years – just as the Hawks rebuild kicks into high gear.