Atlanta Hawks: 3 Takeaways From Tough Road Loss to Sacramento Kings

The Hawks are in serious need of speed, athleticism and defensive acumen in the frontcourt

As he has been doing consistently over the last month or so, Atlanta Hawks head coach Lloyd Pierce mixed in Omari Spellman with the usual frontcourt rotation of Dewane Dedmon,John Collins and Alex Len. And while all three players have had solid years (and an exceptional one for Collins), there still isn’t enough evidence to confidently state what kind of frontcourt pairing would best suit Atlanta.

But the lack of agility in the frontcourt outside of Collins is clear when they face off against teams with young bigs, and it is an even bigger issue when you consider the fact that Collins—while absolutely awesome on offense—has a ways to go on the defensive end of the floor.

Harry Giles specifically, wreaked havoc all over the floor for the Kings. And though Giles is a skilled player who is capable of some nice pass out of the post, it was simply his speed, effort and energy that played a hand in his dominance. He was able to easily beat the likes of Spellman, Len and (in many cases) Collins down the floor, leading to easy opportunities for alley-oops and other dump off passes.

The Kings are one of the better 3-point shooting teams in the league in terms of percentage but the Hawks treated them like they were one of the top teams in terms of 3-point attempts.

You would often see the Hawks wings crash down or tagging (meaning: to make contact/bump) on the roll man in the pick-and-roll but then scurrying away to quickly to recover to the 3-point line.

In the clip below, Bembry does a bad job of tagging Giles, leading to him breaking free near the basket. And though it is not his responsibility as a defender on the strong side of the floor, it would’ve been nice to see Spellman make some sort effort to quickly get over and at least have an effect on Giles’ eventual shot. Spellman was guarding Marvin Bagley III in that clip, who is shooting 25 percent from the 3-point line the season, so safe to say he would’ve been an OK man for Spellman to leave if he had that kind of read-and-react skill on defense.

Of course, the fact that the Hawks frontcourt trio struggled defensively in this game is not a huge concern, as we knew about the defensive shortcomings of all three players coming into the season.

But the only frontcourt pairing on the season that has a positive net rating for the Atlanta Hawks is the Collins-Len pairing, and that is because on offense, that pairing beats up teams with a massive 32.9 percent offensive rebound rate.

However, after starting the game 4/4 from the field, Collins went 1/11 over the final three quarters of the game with Willie Cauley-Stein, Bagley and Giles all slowing him down. And while Len didn’t receive much playing time in the matchup (18 minutes) it is unlikely that he would’ve had a huge impact on the outcome seeing as he is not a great pick-and-roll defender.

So with Spellman, Dedmon and even the (analytically) great Collins-Len pairing looking overmatched against Bagley (17 points, 12 rebounds), Giles (20 points, 7 rebounds) and to a lesser extent Cauley-Stein (9 points, 5 rebounds), this game helped tremendously in showing what the Atlanta Hawks should value as the 2019 NBA Draft approaches.