Atlanta Hawks Week In Review: The gauntlet begins

Starting with this past week of games, I’ll be doing a weekly Atlanta Hawks update that will include things like performance evaluations (for the team and key individual players), conference and league standing, how things relate to the draft, and more.

These updates will include games played from Thursday-Wednesday of a given week, due to time restraints.

Let’s dive in to the first installment.

Games In This Week’s Update: vs Pistons, @ Lakers, @ Warriors

The Hawks wound up losing all three of these games, starting with a 124-109 loss to Detroit at home. That blowout was followed by two encouraging road decisions in a 107-106 loss to Lebron’s Lakers and a 110-103 loss to the defending champs, who were without Stephen Curry and Draymond Green.

Speaking of that loss to Golden State, let’s relive that nice dime from Huerter

Player Performances

Trae Young

Young averaged 13.3 points, 8.6 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 4.3 turnovers in three games this week. The versatile guard amassed those points by shooting 35.9 percent from the field, 25 percent from three and 8-of-8 from the stripe. Young recorded no foul shot attempts against Los Angeles or Golden State in 62 minutes against those teams.

Young’s best game over the last week definitely came against Los Angeles:

❄️Trae doing ❄️Trae things.

Kent Bazemore

Bazemore posted 15.6 points, 1.6 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 3.0 steals per night last week. He was able to do that on 50 percent shooting from the field, 44.4 percent from three and 11-of-11 from the line. The veteran wing did this on 27.3 minuets per game.

Math is cool! (For those of you like me who don’t quite understand TPA, here is the definition from NBA Math: The concept of total points added (TPA), isn’t particularly complicated. We’re looking at both defensive and offensive effectiveness on a per-possession basis while also incorporating the amount of playing time the contributor in question receives.)

Taurean Prince

Prince didn’t perform particularly well against Detroit with just six points, but impressed against Los Angles and Golden State. The third-year forward posted 17.0 points, 1.6 assists, 5.3 rebounds and 3.0 turnovers per game. Prince shot 59.3 percent from the field, 55.5 percent from three and 3-of-3 at the line.

Here are Prince’s highlights from his team-high, 22-point game against Golden State ⬇️

Conference and League Standing

Three losses last week dropped Atlanta to 3-11 on the year, just one game ahead of Cleveland (who beat Charlotte handily last week) for last in the Eastern Conference. The Hawks are currently tied with the Suns for the second-worst record in the league.

Where Does This Put Atlanta In Regards To The Draft?

This would slate Atlanta into a top three draft pick with a 14 percent chance at the top pick. Because of the lottery reform, Phoenix and Cleveland would also receive a 14 percent chance at that top pick as the other two teams in the top three of the draft order.

Because I like fun things, I’ll do one draft simulation on tankathon.com every week. Here is this week’s result!

The Hawks stay in the second spot here. How does one of Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett sound?

Upcoming Slate Of Games

For next week’s offering, I’ll be providing results, stats and more for games tonight at Denver, Saturday at Indiana, Monday at home to the LA Clippers and Wednesday at home to Toronto.

Other News And Notes

The Hawks will take on the Nuggets on Thursday night in Denver. This one will tip off at 9 PM eastern and the Nuggets are favored by 13 points. John Collins is unlikely to make his season debut tonight but is expected to return shortly from an ankle injury.

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That will do it for this first installment. If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see added to this report, feel free to let us know in the comments.