The College Parks Skyhawks are not a very good basketball team at the moment. This is despite boasting players the caliber of the Atlanta Hawks‘ first-round pick Jalen Johnson and their two-way players Sharife Cooper and Skylar Mays.
They are yet to win a game for the season and they are facing the Westchester Knicks, the team that just handed them their seventh loss of the season. It was not just the fact that the Skyhawks lost, it was the way they got jumped again in the first and then failed to challenge the opposition.
In a return game of sorts for Brandon Goodwin, he reminded the franchise what they were missing out on with his stellar play after they chose not to pursue him in the offseason. As a result of the losses piling up and the fact that the Skyhawks are not putting up much of a fight, the question must be asked if this is the right place for him to develop right now.?
Would the Atlanta Hawks main squad be the better place for Jalen Johnson
While Johnson is still going to struggle to get minutes at the moment if he goes up to the varsity squad, he will be in a better team environment. There is positivity in a winning squad that is not there for a winless team.
Johnson has had his attitude questioned in the past thanks to the way he did not commit to his college team. While the NBA is a totally different environment to college, if Johnson stays with the Skyhawks this will not be conducive to a positive learning environment.
By promoting him to the varsity squad he is living and breathing NBA basketball, learning from some of the best players in the game. This is how he is going to learn to play against the best players in the world, not but playing in the G League.
As the old saying goes, there are no wasted minutes on an NBA court. The Hawks need to find a way to get Johnson some rotation minutes so that they can develop the rookie into a player who will help them later in the year.