One of the things that surprised me most upon plugging back into the NBA after a month away was that the Atlanta Hawks had catapulted from their customary middle-of-the-pack position in the standings when I'd left all the way to the top of the Eastern Conference by the time I returned. "Twenty-five and eight?" I thought. "Wait — the Atlanta Hawks? You're kidding, right?"
I heard a similar tone struck while having a conversation Wednesday with an NBA-loving radio host who admitted that the last decade-or-so of mostly mediocrity had led his eyes to kind of glaze over any time he saw the Hawks' uniforms. That's something of a shame — for one thing, I kind of dig those red alternates — but it in came in the context of asking whether or not this year's version of the Hawks, the one that dismantled the league in December en route to overtaking the Toronto Raptors atop the East, is A) for real and B) worth keeping an eye on heading into what promises to be a marquee matchup with the (alas, possibly Z-Bo-less) Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night.
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The answer, near as I can tell based on the stinkfaces Atlanta's inspiring in its opposition these days, is a big affirmative to both. If you've been wondering, too, here's a brief primer on what's brought us here and why this might be the season to believe in the Hawks:
• They're surging. No, they might not win three out of every four games for the rest of the season, but they're in peak form right now, having won five in a row, 10 of their last 11 and a whopping 21 of their last 24 games stretching back to the night after Thanksgiving. Eleven of those wins have come against teams that'd be in the playoffs if the season ended today. Eight of them have come on the road. (In fact, it's been nearly a month since the Hawks lost on the road, with the Dec. 13 defeat coming at the hands of — naturally — the Orlando Magic.)
Five have come against Western Conference competition, including Monday's impressive 107-98 road victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, which improved Atlanta to 26-8, the third-best record in the NBA behind only the Golden State Warriors and Portland Trail Blazers ... whom the Hawks just beat Saturday, 115-107, in Oregon, on the second night of a back-to-back. And speaking of competition...
• They're not padding their record against lightweights. Sure, the general weakness of the Eastern Conference compared to the West means that Atlanta's overall slate might not necessarily match up to some Left Coast powers. (ESPN.com's strength-of-schedule rankings place the Hawks 25th among the NBA's 30 teams so far.) But Atlanta's rolled up a 9-2 record against Western Conference opponents, with the two losses coming by a combined seven points in a road game against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and at home in Nick Young's season debut for the Los Angeles Lakers. (As if any force marshalled against the Lakers could've prospered that night.)
The Hawks outscored Western opponents by 4.9 points per 100 possessions over those 11 games, right in line with their full-season efficiency differential (+5.2-per-100), whole scoring and defending at top-10 efficiency levels against the fairer conference. And check out which team's got the best mark against winning opposition, per NBA.com's John Schuhmann:
Ca-caw.
• They're balanced. Heading into Wednesday's action, Atlanta's tied for ninth in the league in offensive efficiency, scoring an average of 105.7 points per 100 possessions, and tied for fifth in the NBA in defensive efficiency, holding opponents to just 100.6 points-per-100. They're one of only four teams to rank in the top 10 on both sides of the ball, along with the Warriors, Blazers and Central Division-leading Chicago Bulls.
Both represent considerable improvement over last year's model of the Hawks, which finished smack dab in the middle of the pack in both categories, and while it's Atlanta's offense that's drawing comparisons to San Antonio, it's the Hawks' defense that seems to be a bigger story.
"Last year, we were one of the worst teams in the league defensively, and I think we stepped it up a lot," point guard Jeff Teague said Monday, according to Bleacher Report's Josh Martin. "This year, we’re more active defensively, trying to get into passing lanes, create turnovers. I think we’re doing a pretty good job so far."
It's awful hard to argue with the league's fifth-best defensive rating, sixth-lowest opponents' field-goal percentage, and third-best record, after all.
• No, for real, they're balanced. Nobody on the Hawks averages more than Teague's 17.4 points per game, but all five Atlanta starters — Teague, power forward Paul Millsap, center Al Horford, shooting guard Kyle Korver and small forward DeMarre Carroll — average at least 11.6 a night. Nine Hawks — those five, plus top reserves Dennis Schroder, Mike Scott, Pero Antic and Thabo Sefolosha — all chip in at least five points a night for an attack that ranks fourth in the league in both effective field goal percentage, which accounts for 3-pointers being worth more than regular buckets, and True Shooting percentage, which factors in 2-point, 3-point and free-throw averages.
Oh, that's another thing — Atlanta bombs away from deep. Only seven teams have taken more 3-balls per game than the Hawks thus far this season, and only six make more per contest. Leading the way, obviously, is the sharpshooting Korver, who's drilling 51.3 percent of his triples (just one-thousandth of a percentage point behind the New Orleans Pelicans' Luke Babbitt for tops in the league) while launching 6.2 long balls per 36 minutes of floor time.
But the strafing isn't limited to Korver continually getting open off curls, screens and off-ball marathoning. Under former Spurs disciple and second-year head coach Mike Budenholzer, an awful lot of Hawks have the green light — seven Atlanta players average at least two triple tries per game, helping provide all sorts of space on the interior for the bigs, driving lanes for the guards, and tough covers all over as the ball ping-pongs around the perimeter on a Hawks team that ranks in the top five in passes per game, total assists, secondary assists, assist opportunities and points created by assist per game, according to NBA.com's SportVU tracking data, as well as overall assistant percentage (the share of team baskets on which an assist is lodged) and .
• Seriously, though ... balance: Check out this neat little nugget:
No, the Hawks don't have a signature superstar — longtime Clippers announcer Ralph Lawler noted the other night, as the Hawks were putting the finishing touches on their second victory over Doc Rivers' club in as many weeks, that there isn't really anybody on Atlanta's roster that scares you. But there's a silver lining to that particular cloud, as veteran big man Elton Brand sees it, according to ESPN.com's Kevin Arnovitz:
“Not to dump on any specific team, but when you play against a superstar, you know exactly where the ball is going,” Brand said. “Certain guys are going to get the ball at certain times at certain spots. They're running their sets.”
The Hawks, to be sure, run their sets, too. But their sets take advantage of the fact that just about anybody can be dangerous if you give them the chance to be.
"Everybody's a threat, everybody's an option, and on different nights, different guys lead us scoring and hopefully it makes us dynamic, a little harder to prepare for and harder to guard," Budenholzer recently told Jeff Zillgitt of USA TODAY Sports. "There's really an unselfishness and there's a belief in each other."
Which comes back to another point:
• They're well-coached. Budenholzer came highly touted after spending nearly two decades with the Spurs, and the more you watch the Hawks' free-flowing motion offense, the more you can see why. That's especially true when you watch the beautiful plays the Hawks always seem to run, and the clean looks they always seem to get, coming out of timeouts:
It goes beyond just Budenholzer's facility with X's and O's, though. Atlanta doesn't beat itself, committing the fourth-fewest fouls in the league thus far. They cough the ball up at a middle-of-the-pack rate while creating turnovers at the league's seventh-best clip. They allow the league's ninth-lowest number of restricted-area attempts per game. And they're absolutely dynamite in the clutch, posting a 15-6 record in games where the score's been within five points in the final five minutes, and outscoring the opposition by a blistering 28.2 points per 100 possessions in such situations.
They don't get rattled, they don't get anxious; they just get the job done, consistently and thoroughly. The results have been remarkable, in stark contrast to the many prognosticators who looked at this Hawks roster prior to the season — with Atlanta's ownership, front office and everything else mired in scandal and misery — and expected roughly more of the same middling production.
"[...] we weren't mad about people not talking about us," Korver told Zillgitt. "We feel we have something to prove and we're out here trying to do that right now."
There's depth on the roster, belief in the locker room, a strong leader on the sidelines and, by hook or by crook, increasing interest in the homegrown product. All that's left now is to settle the ownership situation. Some had feared might result in relocation, but that doesn't seem to be the case:
The Hawks are not only here and for real, it seems, but are staying put, and just in time for the NBA world to stand up and take notice of the brilliance that's been brewing in the ATL. Pretty good timing, I'd say.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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