The Atlanta Hawks are currently mired in a 5-game losing streak, are 1-9 in their last 10 games and have the second-worst record in the entire NBA at 21-55 (tied with the Memphis Grizzlies).
Despite the rather unpleasant basketball the team has played this season – with some exceptions – this loss-heavy season has been about what could’ve been expected in the first year of a rebuild.
Though the play has been insipid and lifeless at times, the payoff will be an extremely high draft pick in the 2018 draft – always the main goal in the first year of a rebuild. With many tantalizing prospects already committed to playing in the NBA next season, the Hawks would do well to remain in prime position to grab a top 3-5 pick in a top-heavy draft.
As our previous Mock Drafts (post All-Star break and Mock Draft 2.0) would indicate, the top 7 or 8 in this draft are all top-flight prospects and should be taken with alacrity, but when deciding who to take with their extremely high first round pick, a more nuanced approach must be taken.
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Sure, the team has multiple needs across pretty much every position, but some needs are more glaring than others. Also, General Manager Travis Schlenk’s master plan must be taken into account.
Will Schlenk, in his second year at the helm, eschew established point guard Dennis Schröder in favor of a different type of ballhandler? Will he draft a pure center to play alongside clear franchise building block John Collins? Will he grab another high-upside wing to play alongside Taurean Prince and to replace Kent Bazemore, who might leave via trade in the offseason?
These are all salient questions. The prudent response for this Hawks front office should be: Take the best player available. NBA drafts from years past are littered with the mistakes of hubristic front offices, so let’s not let that be the trademark of Schlenk’s regime as well. His first choice of John Collins has been a terrific one, so let’s see if he continues the hot streak.
Without further ado, here’s our most recent Mock Draft for the Atlanta Hawks.
As of this writing, Atlanta is in line for the second overall pick behind the hapless Phoenix Suns, who have lost 13 straight games and lost to the Hawks on a Taurean Prince game-winner the last time the two teams played.
The Memphis Grizzlies have been winning too many games recently, so they are now in pole position for the third overall pick.
To this writer, the second overall pick is the exact position that I want the Hawks to obtain in May’s NBA draft lottery. Most pundits have this draft with a top tier featuring two players: DeAndre Ayton and our pick for the Hawks in this situation, Slovenian phenom Luka Doncic.
If you’ll remember, we sung the praises of Luka Doncic and picked him with the #1 overall pick in our first mock draft, and very little has changed in the intervening months to change our minds from picking him one pick later. Though he has somewhat cooled off in the EuroLeague, he continues to express astonishing basketball IQ and preternatural passing ability – both of which are things that the Hawks are sorely lacking.
The main thing here is that the onus to make a decision is on the team with the first overall pick (the Suns in this scenario). The Hawks could simply sit back, let Phoenix make their choice, then select whichever player remains. For Atlanta, Doncic would immediately make the team more viable on offense, and help to improve the team’s lack of playmakers and decision-makers in the pick-and-roll.
The amount of times that John Collins is open rolling to the lane, looking for a pass that never comes is laughable, and something the Hawks should try to remedy with this selection.
Though the jump-shooting numbers for Doncic have fallen considerably since his knockdown efforts earlier in the season, he is still 10th in the Euroleague with a 61.9 true shooting percentage. Though he is only shooting 30.6 percent from deep on 4.8 attempts per game, his form is excellent and he might just be going through an extended cold steak – which will be affect his numbers more in the shortened minutes he receives in the Euroleague.
Overall, Doncic’s stats are stellar: 15.2 points per game, 5.2 rebounds per game, 4.5 assists per game and 1 steal per game in only 24.6 minutes playing for Real Madrid in the Euroleague. Luka is in the conversation for the Euroleague’s MVP award, and if he won, he would be the first teenager to ever take home that honor.
Though his per-game numbers are striking, especially considering a relatively low minutes load, it is prescient to take a look at the per-36 minutes numbers for Doncic as well, which is more representative of the time he will play in the NBA: 22.1 points, 7.6 rebounds, 6.6 assists and 1.5 steals. Wow.
That all-around production would automatically vault Atlanta’s talent level one tier, as they are currently running at a talent deficit at every position.
If Doncic can find his shot from distance in the NBA, he is a can’t-miss prospect and could transform the franchise for years to come, especially if provided with more terrific prospects later on in this draft such as…
Though we have provided many options for this pick in our prior Mock Drafts (and we are still extremely high on Keita Bates-Diop out of Ohio State and Aaron Holiday out of UCLA), but this time, we chose Troy Brown out of Oregon.
Brown is young (18 years, 7 months), which would provide the Hawks with a high-upside player who has many years of growth ahead of him. The Hawks would do well to nab a promising wing prospect in order to modernize their team and provide a switch-happy system on defense that could bamboozle unsuspecting offenses with length, quickness and athleticism on the perimeter.
Though Brown shot under 30 percent from three-point territory in the NCAA this season (a troubling sign for any wing trying to make it in the NBA), he still managed to put up strong all-around numbers of 11.3 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game in over 30 minutes of play this season for the Ducks.
A strong and athletic 6’7”, 215-lb frame has room for growth and muscle mass, which Brown should be able to tack on with NBA trainers and some gym time. The league is moving towards a more undersized profile, and locking up a talented option like Brown for years to come would suit the Hawks well.
Again, any number of our previous picks would make sense for Atlanta here (Landry Shamet, Rawle Alkins, Jerome Robinson), but with the team lacking size at the center position, we opted for the Turkish seven-footer Omer Yurtseven out of NC State with the final pick in the first round.
The Hawks got absolutely trucked in the paint this season, as Dewayne Dedmon’s thinner frame and John Collins’s relative inexperience did not provide much resistance at the rim to drivers or bulkier big men, giving opposing teams consistently easy points.
Yurtseven, who clocks in at 7 feet and a stocky 245 pounds would help to address some of those needs, and he has also shown a knack for finishing plays in the paint – as well as stepping out and drilling deep treys as well.
For NC State, who made it to the NCAA Tournament but lost in the first round to Seton Hall, Yurtseven had a strong all-around season. He averaged 13.5 points, 6.7 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game in only 23.5 minutes – numbers which would make him an advanced stats darling at the NBA level.
Perhaps the most striking statistical achievement for Yurtseven is his sky-high shooting percentage from downtown. On 44 attempts from deep, the seven-foot-tall Yurtseven drilled 22 three-points – that’s right, good for 50 percent shooting from downtown. Now detractors might point to his much more pedestrian 61.3 percent showing from the foul line as a better indicator of his actual shooting skills, but free throws are odd – and not really representative of a real jump shot.
Having some heft and size in the interior would help Atlanta going forward, and if Yurtseven can show strong defensive instincts as well as a penchant for hitting spot up threes, he will have a place in Atlanta’s rotation.
The Hawks’ final pick in the 2018 draft will come in the form of their own second-round pick, which will likely be in the top 35 or 36. For this pick, we opted for Melvin Frazier out of Tulane University.
Though a high-upside pick like freshman Hamidou Diallo out of Kentucky will almost certainly be available here, his rather disastrous first NCAA season left a bad taste in the mouths of many, so a more surefire 3-and-D option like Frazier would serve Atlanta’s needs better.
Frazier is a gifted athlete who showed plenty of flashes in his junior year, and his all-around effectiveness belied an NBA-ready skill set that would immediately upgrade the Hawks’ wing rotation.
For the Tulane Green Wave, Frazier averaged 15.9 points, 5.6 rebounds, 2.9 assists and an impressive 2.1 steals in 34.4 minutes per game. Most impressive was his outside shot, which he hiked up with relative frequency; on 3 attempts per game from deep, Frazier shot 38.5 percent.
That’s an impressive number, but it must be noted that it was a career-high percentage for Frazier by a considerable margin, as his previous best percentage from downtown came in his freshman season, when he shot only 28.6 percent from downtown. If that 10 percent improvement is real, then the Hawks can count on Frazier being an important player for them as they move into the second year of their rebuild.
Next: The Renaissance of Kent Bazemore
A lot can change from now to the NBA draft lottery on May 15th, so keep it locked to Soaring Down South for all the Hawks draft news that pops up.