Atlanta Hawks: Nate McMillan has the chance to rewrite his playoff narrative

The Atlanta Hawks have made it to the second round of the playoffs by dispatching the New York Knicks in just five games. This is not too surprising given that the Hawks were a different team under Nate McMillan. He took over just prior to the All-Star break and the team did not look back.

McMillan took the Hawks from 11th position at this time to finish fifth in the Eastern Conference, not getting the fourth seed only due to losing the season series against the Knicks. It was a tremendous coaching performance as he had a heap of injury issues like his predecessor Lloyd Pierce. The difference is, McMillan was able to overcome them.

The good thing is, this is McMillan’s fifth straight trip to the playoffs. He had four straight visits as the head coach of the Indiana Pacers. The problem was with these past series was he was swept three times and lost the other in seven games.

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The Atlanta Hawks need Nate McMillan to lead them to the conference finals.

The Hawks are hoping that McMillan can do something he has never done before, make it out of the second round of the playoffs. In his nine postseason visits, McMillan has only made it out of the first round once,  way back in 2004-05 when he was the coach of the Seattle SuperSonics.

He actually only has a 36.2 percent win record in 58 playoff games. The problem that McMillan has had is that he has taken teams to the playoffs who have overperformed. Then when the postseason blowtorch is applied, the teams are not up to it, similar to what happened to the New York Knicks in the last playoff series.

He now has an incredibly talented team that has the potential to go very deep into this current postseason. If McMillan can do this, then his case will be made even stronger to be the new Hawks head coach.