This article absolutely tears into the Hawks. Here’s one of the quotes: “If the Hawks have any ‘identity’ right now, it’s of a soft, relatively joyless team of 9-to-5 middle managers putting in perfunctory shifts until their flights to Cancun leave on April 15.” [https://theathletic.com/5200949/2024/01/14/atlanta-hawks-nba-standings/](https://theathletic.com/5200949/2024/01/14/atlanta-hawks-nba-standings/)
by redonindigo
7 Comments
The Athletic: yea they suck
tldr? I’m not paying
I ain’t paying to read that shit
I thought it was brutal and honest. Was at the game last night and WOOF
Fun Fact: if you have safari iOS you can bypass the paywall by clicking reader mode as soon as the article loads, that’s how i got it. Nevertheless here ya go:
ATLANTA — Washington 127, Atlanta 99.
Yikes. The Hawks have hit rock bottom … right? Right?!
Well, things can always get worse, but if this isn’t the exact bottom, the Hawks can certainly see it from there.
Coming off a moribund home loss to the Indiana Pacers on Friday that theoretically should have served as motivation, the Hawks were outworked, outexecuted, outcoached and outplayed on every level on Saturday against the lowly Wizards.
That this happened on their home court, against a Washington team that visited State Farm Arena with a 6-31 record and whose minus-10.4 points per game scoring margin was among the worst in NBA history, was an embarrassment for a team that is theoretically in “win-now” mode. So much for that: The Hawks are 15-23 and in 11th place in the Eastern Conference. If the season ended today, they wouldn’t make the Play-In Tournament.
Atlanta didn’t have injuries to blame either: Seven of its top eight players were available Saturday, above par at this time of season in the NBA. The Hawks could only point fingers at the limitations of the roster and the inability of the coach and front office to cure them thus far.
Before we go further, I will make the glass-half-full point that the Hawks have been in similar straits before. Indeed, it’s practically an annual event on the local calendar, a peach-flavored basketball Festivus.
Most notably, they were 14-20 when they replaced Lloyd Pierce with Nate McMillan in March 2021, a season that ended with a trip to the Eastern Conference finals. They were 17-25 in 2021-22 before turning on the jets to win 45 games and beat Charlotte in the Play-In. And they were 29-30 last season when they replaced MacMillan with Quin Snyder, recovering enough to beat the eventual East champion Miami Heat on the road in the Play-In and take two games from the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.
“Although our record is ass right now, we can be a lot better,” Trae Young said after the game. “This is a process, and I’m not worried.”
Perhaps that history is giving the Hawks a false sense of security because this weekend sure seems like a good time to worry.
For those who didn’t watch, it’s hard to put into words how utterly lifeless the Hawks looked this weekend. Needing to grab some wins in a five-game homestand against less-than-imposing opposition, the Hawks instead were pounded 126-108 by a Tyrese Haliburton-less Pacers team on Friday and routed on Saturday by the aforementioned Wizards.
In particular, the parade of opponent layups has become laughable. Indiana scored 28 points in the paint in the first quarter on Friday. A day later, Washington looked like a seasoned 50-win team ruthlessly taking care of business, effortlessly carving up the Hawks to the tune of 99 points in the first three quarters.
By the start of the third quarter, it looked like the Hawks had let go of the rope. Check out the “resistance” on this Deni Avdija coast-to-coast drive:
It was honestly a pretty fair assessment
There is no lie in that article.