The Atlanta Hawks have finally made it to the postseason, but believe it or not they aren’t in the playoffs…at least not yet. The Atlanta Hawks will take on the Charlotte Hornets at home in State Farm Arena tonight at 7 pm in the first of two play-in tournament games the Hawks will have to win before they get the chance to take on the number one seeded Miami Heat. However, this article wasn’t written to tell you how the play-in tournament works. This article is actually about a guy who you probably won’t see in the play-in tournament at all, and possibly not even the playoffs, John Collins. Can the Atlanta Hawks make a deep playoff run without John Collins? Jon Chuckery discussed this topic on his show Tuesday night.
The short answer to the question is yes. John Collins has missed 28 games for the Hawks this season and in those 28 games the Atlanta Hawks are 17-11. To dive even deeper, in the last sixteen games, all played without John Collins, the Hawks are 11-5. The Atlanta Hawks have found their rhythm, found their roles, and Nate McMillan has figured out his rotation without John Collins. Now, even though John Collins being out won’t stop the Atlanta Hawks from making a deep playoff run, Jon Chuckery believes they can’t afford to lose anybody else now saying “Where I get concerned is once you start to lose other guys in the mix, you know if Galo is out, or Bogi is out, or if Hunter is out, or this, that and the other. They’ve adjusted to life without John Collins.”
Jon doesn’t deny what John Collins brings to the table, and acknowledges the Hawks are a better team with John Collins on the court by saying “I do think they can still make a run, can they get maybe as far as they’d like without John Collins, probably not, at some point you would love to have his low post presence and his ability to rebound the basketball as things get tightened up in half-court sets, but I do think early on the Hawks, because they have lived without John Collins for again a while now.”
The Atlanta Hawks current health shouldn’t hold the Hawks back from making another deep playoff run…for now, but if the Hawks lose more players besides John Collins and Lou Williams, who have already been ruled out for Wednesday’s play-in game versus the Charlotte Hornets, they could be in real trouble as the bench would get stretched even thinner. Some players to look out for will be Danilo Gallinari and Bogdan Bogdanovic. Gallinari has done a great job filling in for John Collins as the starting power forward, and Bogdanovic has been a great offensive punch off the bench this season, but both have been nursing recent injuries, so the last thing the Hawks need is for those two important guys to possibly re-aggravate their respective injuries because that could definitely shorten what the Atlanta Hawks and Atlanta Hawks fans thought would be another deep postseason run. Atlanta is currently favored by five in their matchup with the Hornets tomorrow, so it looks like one person agrees with Jon Chuckery, and thinks the Atlanta Hawks will be just fine without John Collins…for now.