Atlanta Hawks: Grading John Collins’ 2019-2020 season

We’ll continue our player grades with the Atlanta Hawks second-best player… John Collins. Let’s review how he looked this season.

John Collins is an integral part of what the Atlanta Hawks are building on both sides of the ball. He is the Hawks second-leading scorer, leading rebounder, leading shot-blocker and, believe it or not, their most efficient three-point shooter.

Collins, unfortunately, started the season with a 25-game suspension due to his violation of the NBA’s anti-drug policy. This led to the Hawks as a team getting off to a pretty rough start and they never really recovered.

John Collins would have had a real chance at making the All-Star team in the Eastern Conference this year had he not been suspended. Regardless of the Hawks poor record, the duo of Trae Young and John Collins has been impressive. If they can continue to grow together, they should be a force in the next couple of years.

This season, John Collins averaged 21.6 points, 10.1 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game on shooting splits of .583/.401/.800. Not only is Collins putting up big numbers, but he’s also doing it incredibly efficiently. This is encouraging as he continues to have a large role on the team.

While Collins has had an incredible impact on the offensive side of the ball in terms of his scoring, he is also a really solid defender. As mentioned, Collins leads the team in blocks per game with 1.6. In addition to his shot-blocking prowess, Collins is also a really good individual defender often making things difficult for opposing teams bigs.

The biggest flaw in John Collins’ game is his lack of playmaking ability. He’s great at operating in the pick and roll/pop as the screener, however, he’s unable to be the ball handler. Additionally, his passing vision off of these actions is also pretty limited. If Collins can improve as a secondary playmaker, that would help him and the Hawks immensely.

According to FiveThirtyEight, John Collins was the only Atlanta Hawk besides Trae Young that boasted a positive offensive rating at +1.4. Additionally, Collins had a defensive rating of -0.4 which is really good considering the Hawks as a team had a defensive rating of -5.1.

Clearly, John Collins performed very well this season for the Atlanta Hawks and his chemistry with the teams All-Star in Trae Young only seems to be getting stronger. Unfortunately, the duo has yet to produce much in terms of wins. And while the blame for the Hawks lack of success shouldn’t fall solely on Trae Young and John Collins, some of it should.

John Collins and company will need to start producing victories sooner than later if they want to keep their names off the trade block. However, for Collins individually, if he continues to improve as he has in each of his first three seasons, it is very likely that he’ll become an All-Star in the very near future, maybe even next season.

Overall, I think John Collins had an excellent season but considering he was suspended for 25-games, that knocks him down at least one point.

Final Grade: B+