John Collins was one of the best players on the Atlanta Hawks last year. Let’s look ahead to his 2018-19 season with five bold predictions for the second-year big man.
The 2018-19 season will be here before you know it, Atlanta Hawks fans, and we want to welcome you to the build-up to it the only way we know how. With plenty of new faces to get acquainted with (as well as a smattering of holdovers from last year’s team), the Hawks will make for a fascinating case study in 2018-19.
One way to look ahead to the 2018-19 regular season is by exploring predictions for each player on the roster. As such, read on and enjoy 5 bold predictions for Second Team All-Rookie member John Collins.
John Collins, or John the Baptist (as his biblical pseudonym goes), had one of the best rookie seasons in Atlanta Hawks history in the 2017-18 season. He was extremely impactful on both ends of the floor, and he provided multiple highlight-reel plays – mostly on the back of his incredible athleticism and propensity for high-flying jams:
Collins was awesome and fully deserving of a First Team All-Rookie spot. Though writers and voters disagreed, he is still one of the franchise cornerstones for a Hawks team that drafted a few more possibilities in that department.
Now, when it comes to boldly predicting how Collins’s 2018-19 season will turn out, two things must be assumed: First (and most importantly), that he stays fully healthy and plays and starts in 78-82 games. Last year, JC played in 74 games but was the starter for only 26 of those contests. Second, if he plays and starts in that number of games, he will likely up his minutes load to somewhere in the 2200-2400 range – roughly around where Taurean Prince finished last year.
With all of that preamble out of the way, let’s dig into 5 bold predictions for John Collins, starting with…
John Collins Will Average 18 PPG
Though perhaps not an eye-popping round number, 18 points per game would be a tremendous step-up for Collins after he averaged 10.5 points per game in his rookie year.
Again, it can be assumed that, if his health permits it, Collins will start more game and log more minutes in his sophomore season than he did during his rookie campaign. If he does, you can expect him to be much sharper on the offensive end – much like he was in his limited playing time in summer league.
Similarly, Collins had countless plays last season in which his lack of experience – or lack of a more willing passing point guard – doomed him to serve as window dressing on an ill-fated drive into traffic or as a wide-open roll man to whom a lob never arrived.
In 2018-19, you can expect Collins to finish some of those more acrobatic dunks as well as upgrade his scoring based on the more talented personnel around him, such as gifted passer Trae Young, who should be providing multiple lobs and easy passes for Collins to finish each and every game.
Combine that with natural progression and Collins’s famed athleticism, you’ve got 18 points per game — no sweat. Now it’s on to the next bold prediction for John Collins…
John Collins Will Average 12 RPG
There it is. Sure, 12 rebounds per game is a big number and one that would’ve qualified JC with the fifth-best rebounds per game number in the league last year. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Collins is a stupendous rebounder, specifically on the offensive boards, where his 11 percent offensive rebound rate was 8th-best in the league as a rookie – so just think how good he’ll be after one year of NBA-level effort and an offseason to improve, work out and hone his craft.
I expect big things from John the Baptist as a rebounder, even if some of these other predictions turn out to be pipe dreams.
In his rookie season, Collins averaged 7.3 rebounds per game, and a whopping 2.4 of those came on the offensive end. If you extrapolate JC’s numbers out to a full seasons-load of minutes (again between 2200-2400), you could easily see Collins logging this hefty per-game average for rebounds.
It’s going to be fun watching Collins crash the boards in 2018-19, and we shall see if this bold prediction comes to pass. Off to the next one.
John Collins Will Finish Top Five in Dunks
I originally had planned to predict that JC would lead the league in dunks, but as his offensive role will likely expand next season (as he continues to work on his perimeter jumper), it’s not believable that he would log the 200+ dunks needed to secure the number-one spot for dunks in the NBA (which was taken home last year by Clint Capela with 213, beating DeAndre Jordan by 1 and Anthony Davis by 2 – tight race!).
However, while that heady over-200 total is likely unrealistic, I can boldly proclaim that Collins will finish the season as one of the top-five dunkers in the league in 2018-19.
Last season Collins logged 123 dunks, which was good enough for 12th-best in the league. He was only separated from the top-5 (Dwight Howard at #4 with 174 and Giannis Antetokounmpo at #5 with 161) by roughly 40 dunks.
If you watched any amount of Atlanta Hawks basketball last season, you know that John Collins did not want for ambitious dunk attempts. There were a massive amount of forceful and high-flying statement dunks that Collins just barely missed.
I have a feeling, now that he has a year of NBA play under his belt, that a lot more of those dunks will start falling. Couple that with the aforementioned higher minutes load, and voila, JC will finish in the top 5 in total dunks next year.
John Collins Will Lead Hawks in Blocks (Again) and Finish Top 10 in Total Blocks
Perhaps this isn’t the boldest claim on this list, but assuming more minutes and more starts, it’s pretty safe to assume that the rookie-season returns on John Collins’s shot-blocking ability will continue to trend upward.
As a rookie, JC led the Atlanta Hawks with 80 total blocks, 1.1 blocks per game and a hearty 3.8 block rate. The block rate is the only one that ranked among the league leaders across the entire NBA last season – sliding in at #16 in a tie with Serge Ibaka.
Simply look at Ibaka’s total blocks from last year (99), and you get a vague idea of how JC’s blocks total will look. However, we’re assuming that Collins will play 2200+ minutes, while Ibaka only saw 2093.
Again, if you bake in minutes played, natural year-over-year improvement as well as the sophomore season bump, Collins has a very good chance to block over 110 shots – safely ensconcing himself in the top 10 in that category in the NBA.
If he does that, there’s no question he’ll lead the Atlanta Hawks, though he will likely do that even if he doesn’t hit that lofty, triple-digit prediction.
John Collins Will Make His 1st All-Star Team
It had to end this way, right?
After outlining all of these sterling statistics as well as waxing poetic about just how important a player John Collins is to the Atlanta Hawks, it’s safe to say a player who is averaging 18 PPG, 12 RPG and 1.5 BPG, consistently dunking on the helpless and exploring a burgeoning three-point jumper deserves to be in the All-Star game.
The Eastern Conference looks far different than it did last season as touchstones such as LeBron James an DeMar Derozan will ply their trade in the West for the first time in their careers.
Also, you can expect that some players with fringe cases (Kemba Walker, Goran Dragic) might not make it in as injury reserves next season.
If that’s the case, Collins will likely be the beneficiary of a watered-down East. Collins has already delivered one unforgettable All-Star weekend moment with this titillatingly athletic slam from a no-look, behind-the-head pass from Donovan Mitchell:
Think about that play, but on an even grander stage. Cherish that thought Atlanta Hawks fans because if JC lives up to his potential, he could be representing the Hawks at the All-Star game for years to come.
Keep it locked to Soaring Down South for all your Atlanta Hawks news, and stay tuned for all the other bold predictions stories for each player on the roster.