Atlanta Hawks: Free throws a bigger issue than team is letting on

At 4-5, the Atlanta Hawks have the exact same record they had through nine games. Unfortunately, anyone looking for more correlation between this and last year in hopes of a similar final outcome may be disappointed. The Hawks simply haven’t been as productive offensively.

They are scoring 6.9 fewer points per game and have seen their efficiency numbers dip across the board as well.

Nate McMillan mentioned the Hawks offense is leading to their suddenly porous defense. They’ve given up 117.6 points per game over their last five. Over that same span, they’ve averaged 105.8 points per contest.

Both numbers are trending in the wrong direction compared to their season averages.

Free throw shooting is impacting every facet of the Atlanta Hawks offense

It’s important to remember the Hawks didn’t start last season as strong as they finished. When focusing on their first nine games of last year, their efficiency numbers were a lot closer to what we have seen from them so far in this campaign than what they showed at the end of the last one.

They shot 44.5 percent from the floor, 35.5 percent from three, and 81.4 percent from the free-throw line over their first nine games of the 2020-21 season. The Hawks were slashing .468/.373/.812 by the end of last season.

This year, again over their first nine games they are back down to 44.7 percent overall, 33.7 percent from outside, and 81.8 at the charity stripe.

Atlanta is getting up more shots overall on the season.

They are taking fewer threes as they have tried to incorporate the mid-range more but have had mixed results at best. Atlanta is taking 7.4 more attempts from the mid-range per game than last season but is hitting them at a clip that is 3.5 percent worse.

It cannot be stressed enough, however, that they have experienced dips in efficiency from every zone on the floor, including the restricted area.

The most direct connection to their scoring dip is their dip in free throws. For all of our talk of Trae Young adjusting better than others around the league to the new rules, he is still down 2.9 points per game.

He is attempting 3.1 fewer free throws per game at the outset of this season.

Additionally, the next four team leaders in free-throw attempts from last season are all down. Clint Capela is down 1.2 free-throw attempts per game, though he’s been more efficient. John Collins has seen a dip of 1.3 attempts. De’Andre Hunter went from 3.7 attempts to 1.0 while Danilo Gallinari has gone from 3.4 to 1.3 per game.

As a team, the Hawks are averaging 5.9 fewer free throw attempts per game on the season.

While obviously not 1:1, with so many areas of the team struggling, this does appear to be a thread of commonality.

To McMillan’s point, they have allowed opponents to shoot 1.1 percent better on defended field goal attempts. That’s not compared to last year, either. Rather, it is compared to non-defended field goal attempts this season. Statistically, the Hawks have been better off not even trying to guard shots so far.

That is obviously oversimplifying it.

It does stand to reason, though, that they are indeed letting their ineffectiveness on offense hinder their defensive effort. It would just appear that the aspect of their offense most adversely affected has been their ability to get to the line this year.

They have talked a lot about sacrifice and figuring out roles; all of which is true. It is a bigger issue with the team healthy this season.

But they could continue to struggle as long as they let the non-calls frustrate them instead of working to get easier offense. Thankfully, we are still very early in the season and the rest of the East isn’t exactly settled either so they have the benefit of time. They just have to come up with the solutions.