Atlanta Hawks announce training camp schedule & new location

The Atlanta Hawks have retooled and are breaking from tradition. After years of keeping their training camp in town, the Hawks will make the roughly 100-minute trip down to Athens and the University of Georgia for this year’s session.

The team announced Monday that it will open its training camp at the Coliseum Training Facility on the campus of the University of Georgia. The trip follows the Hawks’ annual Media Day on Sept. 30 in Atlanta, with the team holding practices in Athens from Oct. 1-3,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Lauren L. Williams wrote on September 12.

“The practices will be closed to the public.”

Here is the full list of practices with times and dates as well as the time for the Hawks’ media day session courtesy of Hawks.com writer Kevin Chouinard.

“This isn’t the first time the Hawks have held camp away from their practice facility in Atlanta,” Williams wrote. “They previously held camp at UGA five times, from 2013-17.”

It was former head coach Mike Budenholzer’s first season at the helm for the Hawks, who won six fewer games in 2013-14 than they did the year before. It had been nine years since the Hawks had last gone to UGA for camp before that. 

They held camp in Macon, Georgia in 2004-05. 

Hawks must change more than just training camp routine

Change can be good, and Williams points out that several teams already regularly travel for training camp. 

For the Hawks, this needs to be more than superficial, and they do not need to look beyond the Eastern Conference for an example of how the method can fall short of achieving what they hope it will.

The Chicago Bulls went to Nashville for training camp ahead of the 2023-24 season.

They won one fewer game than the season before despite myriad injuries. But they fell short of improving and traded away Alex Caruso and sign-and-traded DeMar DeRozan this offseason.

The Hawks have already undergone a fairly sizeable shift, trading Dejounte Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans two years after acquiring him the same way from the San Antonio Spurs. Then there is the future of Trae Young.

Young, a three-time All-Star, is in Year 3 of a five-year, $215.1 million max contract.

However, he will be extension-eligible after the coming season and can exercise his player option to become an unrestricted free agent in 2026.

There is not much more certainty with the rest of the roster, save for rookie No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher. The Hawks have rising star Jalen Johnson, but his looming contract situation adds to the uncertainty even if he is ultimately expected back.

Bogdan Bogdanovic, Dyson Daniels, and Onyeka Okongwu future to be staples.

Will Clint Capela and De’Andre Hunter make it to the regular season? The trade deadline? An argument can be made that Hunter at least should stay.

Capela is in the final year of an expiring contract while Hunter is still under team control through 2026-27, and has been the team’s best perimeter defender. Even if Risacher shows advanced aptitude on that end, the Hawks are not rife with such players.

Daniels is another, though questions about his shooting loom large.

Training camp and the preseason will offer plenty of answers about how this team will look in 2024-25.