The Atlanta Hawks have built a really nice template for their future. They have rebounding covered with John Collins and Clint Capela. Shot blocking is covered by Capela and Onyeka Okongwu with a sprinkling of Collins thrown in.
They have put together a team with a number of high-value role players, some really good starters and rotation pieces but not a second star. This is a major issue for the franchise but in order to get that second star, they are going to need to make some hard calls.
Towards the end of the season the Hawks played Bogdan Bogdanovic off the bench. While this worked for them when the stakes were not as high, as soon as the playoffs hit and it meant something, the Hawks needed to adjust this.
The Atlanta Hawks role players were good until it really mattered.
In three of the four losses that the Hawks suffered in this playoff series, the Heat went on a run and their role players were a huge part of this. Becuase of how tough this team is, they were able to keep the Hawks at bay with good solid play, ensuring the win.
However, the problem here is that Trae Young had an incredibly difficult series but apart from a good few Bogdanovic quarters as well as the solid play of Delon Wright and De’Andre Hunter, the role players were not able to step up like last time. I cue the 27 point explosion by Kevin Huerter in the series against the Philadelphia 76ers last season.
Young had an All-NBA type season which was all good until he came up against a team which was built to stop his kind of game. Unfortunately his teammates around him were unable to pick up the slack this time around. For a team to succeed it cannot come down to just one player having a good series.
The Hawks caught the NBA by surprise last season, they had so many unknown quantities on their team that they became so hard to stop. However, this season, the Hawks were never able to get that momentum going and the Heat are so well-drilled that the Hawk stood very little chance in this series. There are likely going to be many changes coming this offseason.