Hawks proven to be single deepest offensive team in the NBA in new statistic

The Hawks are, top to bottom, the deepest offensive team in the entire NBA.

According to a recent NBA metric measuring offensive talent for the top eight players on each team, the Hawks rank 1st overall, as seen below.

Taking a closer look at the categories, Atlanta's one and two (ranked 20th and 11th compared to other NBA teams' one's and two's) don't pop off the stat sheet as overtly successful compared to their first and second option peers, respectively.

It's their third. Their fourth. Extending all the way to their eighth best offensive engines that drive the Hawks to the Mount Everest of the leaderboard in this metric. Rostering Vit Krejci, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Luke Kennard, and now CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert has its benefits. If you need a tough bucket, just about anyone on the roster can get it for you.

Does this statistic vindicate the departure of Trae Young?

Trae Young – despite all his heroics, all his theatrics, all his wins – was an incredibly ball-dominant player all throughout his tenure in Atlanta.

While the notion that Young was a selfish player is downright incorrect, the idea that players would often be relegated to less prominent offensive roles is nothing short of absolute truth. Similar to any James Harden-led system, Atlanta often rostered a handful of corner-sitters – players that would exist on the offensive end purely to space the floor.

Since Young's departure, the game has shifted further away from such ball-dominant antics. While Jalen Johnson is, and should remain the focal point of the Atlanta offense, he is by no measure anywhere near the heliocentric engine that Young was.

This begs the question – does this vindicate the departure of Trae Young? As successful as the ancillary offensive options have proven to be on the spreadsheets, the wins aren't piling up yet for the Hawks – therefore, the jury is still out.

Additionally, the argument could be made that shifting into a less heliocentric offense and into more of an equal opportunity system was driven by analytics.

In a league where advanced statistics and obscure details often looked over decades ago are often critical drivers of front office decisions (see the Nikola Jokic/Jusuf Nurkic debate that the Denver front office had very early in Jokic's career), it's not farfetched to think that Onsi Saleh was aware of this metric prior to trading away Trae Young.