That Moment When you realize Hassan Whiteside outweighs you by 75 pounds.
Back to back, Jack! There is no time to dwell too hard on yesterday’s disappointing loss in Brooklyn for the Atlanta Hawks, who have flown down the Atlantic and will take on a Miami heat team (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports SUN in MIA) that, like the Hawks, will be playing without their leading scorer.
Hawks players and pregame thread writers alike must steel themselves for a lot of these quick turnarounds. The NBA tried to stretch out the schedule to add a couple weeks’ worth of rest time, but the Hawks might be benefitting as little as anyone in the league from the revision.
This is the back end for the first of 15 back-to-back contests Atlanta will play in this season. Only Memphis, Sacramento, and Utah will have to suffer through such series more often (16 times each). The Eastern clubs with the fewest (13)? Cleveland, and Miami. Nice work, schedule-makers.
Including overlaps, tonight will be the first among 16 occasions this season that the Hawks are participating in their third game in four calendar days. Tonight also initiates first of 17 times this season that they’ll have played in their fourth game over the course of six nights.
One silver lining is that of the Hawks’ back-to-backs, just seven of those pairs will be exclusively on the road (only Charlotte, with six, has less). And Atlanta (1-2) can scratch one of that septet off the list today in South Beach.
As exemplified by the old, notorious Hotel Mutiny off Biscayne Bay, by the 1980s rise of big-time college football in nearby Coral Gables, and by the flashy but shady characters regularly seen on “Miami Vice”, Miamians with money know very well how to stash their cash. The same seems true on the hardwood, where team president Pat Riley spends owner Micky Arison’s dough like it’s going out of style, much unlike Riley’s impeccable fashion sense.
With the dead-money owed to Chris Bosh included, Miami’s $126 million total team payout is among the top of the league. And there’s not much relief in sight over the next two seasons for a franchise that just ducked the punitive repeater tax by the skin of their teeth back in 2016.
Hassan Whiteside leads the way, currently kicking off year two of a 4/98 max contract that, for this year and next, sits just below what the team still must dole out to Bosh. The year before locking down Whiteside, they made-good with Goran Dragic on a 5/90 near-max deal. This offseason, they brought back James Johnson on a 4/60 tip, and Dion Waiters with a 4/52. They re-signed eternal heat big-man Udonis Haslem, who is free to re-up with this club for as long as he’s willing and able, and backup guard Wayne Ellington, of whom Riley noted to the Sun-Sentinel, “It would have killed me to let him go.”
Former Celtic Kelly Olynyk got himself a 4/50 deal, too. Josh Richardson was rewarded with a 4/42 contract extension that kicks in next season. The poison pill Miami agreed to swallow to keep 2016 restricted free agent Tyler Johnson from bolting to Brooklyn? That won’t kick in until next year, either, tripling his current salary to over $19 million per year. The slowly developing Justise Winslow’s third-year option got picked up. Excepting the killer-threat Ellington and Haslem, all of the aforementioned are on guaranteed salaries in 2018-19.
One wonders, to what end? Erik Spoelstra is a fine, proven NBA head coach, and there is ample talent and depth on this roster to reach the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. But this is a lot of spending, now and in the foreseeable future, for a team that’s a nice ragtag bunch, but from whom hardly anyone projects big things.
In this season alone, 22 of 23 ESPN prognosticators (the esteemed Amin Elhassan being the exception), are rolling with Washington as the head of the class in the Southeast Division, with Miami situated closer to Charlotte than the Wizards in most minds. If this remains the case going into 2019, without a healthy and MVP-caliber Whiteside by then, it is easy to envision the heat’s spending scheme toppling fast.
Tonight, Miami will soldier on without Whiteside, who beasted in a losing effort during the season-opener at Orlando (26 points, 22 rebounds), but suffered a bone bruise in his left knee in the third quarter. It’s the same spot, he noted, where he hurt himself colliding with Taurean Prince, during the heat’s preseason-opener versus Atlanta.
The good news for the heat (1-1) is they showed they can play well, at least offensively, without him in the lineup. Despite the Pacers’ Victor Oladipo finding himself unfettered for much of Saturday night, plus Al Jefferson finding a fountain-of-youth, the heat were able to avoid squandering a 21-point lead to Indiana and held on for the 112-108 win.
The originator of “I Dont wanna be here,” Goran Dragic (7-for-11 2FGs, 2-for-2 3FGs vs. IND) had his inside-outside game working as well as ever, while Josh Richardson (8 rebounds, 7 defensive) and James Johnson did a lot of the dirty work (8 assists, 5 blocks) so replacement center Jordan Mickey wouldn’t have to.
Dennis Schröder will have his share of rough patches during this season, especially when his fellow Hawks fail to adequately move, get open, and hit jumpshots (teammates 7-for-23 3FGs @ BKN). But Hawks fans will get hopefully just a taste of how arduous an evening without their lead guard in tow could be.
Schröder (5-for-18 2FGs, 0-for-4 3FGs on Sunday) sprained an ankle in yesterday’s 116-104 loss to Brooklyn, shortly after the Hawks made a final charge to tie the game at 99 apiece in the fourth quarter. Despite a harrowing day shooting the rock, Dennis did manage to reach 8 assists (2 TOs) and sink all seven of his free throw attempts to help keep Atlanta in the running.
He was also a defensive sieve (minus-12 +/- in 31 minutes) versus the Nets’ D’Angelo Russell. Yet it remains to be seen how much Malcolm Delaney (minus-9 in 22 minutes, 1-for-5 FGs, 4 assists, 1 TO) can improve upon that defensive effort tonight. Whether the assignment falls more heavily upon Delaney or Kent Bazemore, the Hawks will have their hands full staying in front of Dragic. The heat guard’s 11.9 drives per game last season (52.8 FG%) were surpassed only by Schröder (12.3) and Thomas.
Not far behind Dragic in driving to the hoop last season was Waiters (11.0 drives per game, 6th-most in NBA), whose 12.6 assist percentage even eclipsed Dragic’s 11.0, although he shot poorly when calling his own number (42.8 FG%). Hawks wing players Bazemore, Prince, and Marco Belinelli need to use active hands to limit and deflect the drive-and-kickouts by heat guards and wings.
Tonight’s game will also grant Hawks fans a chance to see what it looks like to pull the plug on the stop gap at the 4… although it’s arguable how much gap-stopping Ersan Ilyasova (27.8 FG%) has done to opponents, when he’s not laying out for drawn charges. Ilyasova strained his left knee and will be on the shelf along with Schröder tonight.
Ersan’s absence means that we will (should? Pretty please, Coach Bud?) see more pairing of rookie forward John Collins with center Dewayne Dedmon in this game. Collins collected the first of hopefully many double-doubles in his career on Sunday (14 points, 13 boards in just 21 bench minutes). But he and Dedmon have struggled to stay out of foul trouble, so Mike Muscala and former heat player Luke Babbitt (41.4 3FG% for MIA in 2016-17) will have significant roles as well in the rotation today.
Luke got a quick hook after failing to contain the Nets’ Trevor Booker n Sunday, and it may not be wise to attach him to James Johnson today. But Babbs has a jumper that must not go unnoticed (by his own teammates, anyway) whenever he’s in this game.
Dedmon appears increasingly comfortable joining Babbitt and Moose as perimeter options, so Delaney and Baze would do well not to over-dribble and over-think things as ballhandlers, instead finding halfcourt opportunities to drive and turn the heat defense inside-out.
Miami opponents have turned the ball over on just 12.4 percent of possessions (2nd-lowest in NBA). Especially without Whiteside around to help heat defenders, the on-ball pressure might only be in the heads of those in charge of directing the Atlanta offense. With Dedmon and Collins leading the way for the team, the Hawks’ 5.3 screen assists per game rank second in the league, behind only Quin Snyder’s Jazz (5.7) at this early stage.
“Lots of good things from the first 3 games,” the sunny-side-up Baze offered, in truly non-Bledsoe fashion, on Twitter in the aftermath of Sunday’s loss, “Have to learn how to do it for 48!” For an under-experienced bunch playing at least 48 minutes at a high tempo, and given limited chances for rest in between, Hawks players indeed must figure things out in real time, taking advantage of winning opportunities as they arise, rather than squandering them. If the Hawks do manage to figure it out, some of them might even find Pat Riley chilling behind a palm tree next summer, with their next paycheck in hand.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
