What lessons can Hawks take from remaining playoff teams?
The Hawks missed the playoffs for the first time in three seasons, but they experienced similar issues as they had over the last few years. What could they could glean from the teams still alive in the playoffs?
The Atlanta Hawks have been trending backwards for a few seasons now and had to fight through the play-in tournament for the third year in a row. The move for Dejounte Murray clearly didn't work and the team feels like it's stuck in the mud.
After watching two game sevens on Sunday night, Steak has had it with the Atlanta Hawks and their current model.
"It's about mindset!" Shapiro said about what the Hawks might be lacking. "Just look at how the T-Wolves won last night. They held the Nuggets to under 100 points in all four of their wins. All four of them! What are we doing here? The Hawks need to look at the Eastern and Western Conference Finals and figure it out."
Each of the four teams remaining in the postseason has a firm identity from which they base their play. The Indiana Pacers have the best offense in the NBA by a considerable margin, the Dallas Mavericks have a focal point on their stars who have learned to play together, and the Minnesota Timberwolves and Boston Celtics feature stars on their wings with suffocating defense to fall back on.
The Atlanta Hawks too often lacked cohesion on offense and had no answers if they went cold or if Trae were to have a bad night. If the shots aren't falling, the Hawks are destined for a bad night.
"Trae Young is a liability, ten times over, but I'm not blaming him for that," he said about this team on defense. "He's just a diminutive guard that can score and pass. He's just not the guy on the court that can do anything defensively to help you."
Steak continued, "I'm not trying to crush one of our own. Trae Young is a very good basketball player and it's not Trae Young's fault, altogether, that we can't win with this group. But what are we doing?"
The Timberwolves weren't perfect in Game 7 against the defending NBA champions, in fact, they were far from it -- but they didn't have to be.
Even on a night that they go down 20 points and their star was 6-of-24 (0.250) from the field, none of that mattered. They aren't a team that needs their one thing to go right.
"You see that it's not working," he said about the Hawks. "You see that we can't defend. We need to draft the seven-footer to protect the rim, we need to let Dejounte possibly be the point guard, we need to tell guys that we're going to play defense and that we're going to get after it because this group is not working!"
