While the Kristaps Porzingis trade made the Atlanta Hawks contenders to win the East once again, the unicorn faces one major hurdle in Atlanta. As a big man with waning agility, how will the Hawks defense manage pick and rolls involving Trae Young and Porzingis?
Porzingis is at his best defensively playing in drop coverage, where he uses his length and body to stonewall attacking opponents. Drop coverage, however, leaves the defense exposed to pull-up threes and midrange shots.
This was not a major concern for the Celtics, who supported Porzingis with elite perimeter defenders such as Jrue Holiday and Derrick White. These defensive menaces are elite at fighting through screens, mitigating the risk of a pull-up jumper. While future Defensive Player of the Year Dyson Daniels should handle drop coverage well, Young is not the same high-level defender.
Quin Snyder will have to be creative defensively to mask this weakness
The Hawks will obviously try to keep Young on the floor as often as possible. His scoring and playmaking presence drives the Atlanta offense, and with no proven backup point guard, the team will struggle when he is on the bench. Young is also the only defensive weakness in the Hawks' rotation, so teams will do whatever they can to make him work on defense.
A simple solution to their problem could be having Porzingis play higher on screens. This leaves Porzingis far from the rim, however, and creates opportunities for players to drive past Porzingis. Atlanta's defense would be better off using less conventional strategies and prioritizing elite interior defense.
An excellent example of a team with a similar roster construction is the 2014-2016 Warriors. Teams attacked Curry as often as possible, both to generate easy looks and to tire Curry. Andrew Bogut was a defender who excelled in the paint but struggled in open space against quick guards. Warriors coach Steve Kerr countered this by hiding Curry on weak defenders and "pre-switching."
Pre-switching is when a team switches a weak defender when they realize the offense plans to involve the weak defender. For example, teams with elite iso threats would try to force the Warriors to have Curry guard the iso threat by having Curry's man set a screen. When Curry's man approached the ball handler, the Warriors would switch Curry with a better defender. This meant that the screen could not involve Curry, leaving the Warriors with their desired personnel guarding the action.
Snyder should employ tactics like pre-switching and aggressive help defense to limit the offense's chance to attack a Young-Porzingis pick and roll. With their length and defensive talent, Atlanta has many options to throw at offenses in an attempt to minimize the effects of Young and Porzingis's defensive limitations.