The Atlanta Hawks were supposed to be contending for the top of the East this year. Through five games, however, the team is playing nowhere near the level required for a fruitful season.
There are a concerning number of problems the team has to address, the most confusing one being the horrid defensive pairing of Kristaps Porzingis and Jalen Johnson. What was supposed to be an interesting combination of defensive profiles has been a disaster through five games.
In 54 minutes played together, Porzingis and Johnson have a whopping 134.4 defensive rating, 18.8 points worse than league average. Although the sample size is still growing, we are approaching a point where the net rating data is somewhat reliable. If the Hawks are going to allow 18.8 points per 100 points greater than average when their starters are playing, the team stands zero chance against competitive teams.
What is the root of this problem, and how can the Hawks move forward
Defensive rating is a team statistic that can be misleading for individual players or player pairings. Still, the problem is clearly the bigs when looking at the lineups these two were featured in. The overwhelming majority of these minutes came with three of Dyson Daniels (44 minutes played together), Trae Young (38 minutes), Zaccharie Risacher (38 minutes), and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (26 minutes).
While your gut may tell you Young is the problem with his defensive reputation, the defense is actually 12.3 points per 100 worse with Trae off the floor. The non-Trae sample size is far too small to make a judgment, but the big men are clearly the problem, both statistically and by eye test.
So what has gone wrong?
The short answer is that Johnson has not taken the defensive side of the ball very seriously this year. This is a truly strange development, as he has historically been a solid defender and, if anything, is in a reduced offensive role. It appears to be a mental block for Johnson. At times, he seems to be checked out, falling into poor positioning that even his world-class athleticism cannot recover from.
The data supports this conclusion, as the defense is noticeably better with Porzingis and Onyeka Okongwu. This doesn’t absolve Porzingis of fault, however. KP has looked particularly sluggish on both ends of the floor, taking noticeably longer to recover after making an intense effort or taking contact. Perhaps this is just the reality of Porzingis’s game for the time being while he works to fully recover from his POTS diagnosis.
Regardless of the root of the issue, the two bigs need to figure it out on defense before Quin Snyder and Onsi Saleh have a real problem on their hands.