Atlanta Hawks stud from Christmas Day loss: Wright had his best game of the season
Delon Wright has had quite an interesting individual season. On one hand, he has brought a lot of intangibles that don’t always show up in the stat sheet. He’s tied for the team lead in offensive loose balls recovered and is sixth in deflections. And while he hasn’t been the primary backup, the Hawks offensive rating is 2.6 points better with Wright on the floor than it is with Young off.
He was quietly having a nice outing against the 76ers before getting hurt late.
But he has often seemed averse to scoring the ball either passing up on what should be easy looks or missing them when he does take them. The latter issue can obviously lead to the former which is why this game was so encouraging.
He had his best game of the season offensively against the Knicks.
https://twitter.com/ATLHawks/status/1474844892291600388
Wright had four rebounds, three steals, two assists, and one block to just one turnover.
The Hawks had many issues defensively in this contest but Wright’s play on-ball was not one of them. Knicks point guard Kemba Walker did walk away with a triple-double. But he shot 25 percent and went 2-of-9 from deep to get his 10 points. Walker entered the game averaging 31.3 points on 44.1 percent shooting overall and from distance.
This won’t quiet all of the noise. He’ll need to show some of that aggressiveness once the Hawks are healthy again for that. But this was about as good of a way to get the ball rolling in that direction as one could hope for.