TheNorthCydeRises

So who is their 2nd best player?

If building a team around Luka is easier, why don' they have higher caliber players on his team? And why are the Mavs just slightly better than the Hawks? Luka's style is more ball dominant than Trae's. So if you drop Luka in Atlanta, he'll shoot a higher percentage than Trae, but some of the same issues you have on this team would remain. Does Luka make Hunter a better player? How about Collins? Is the lob threat to Capela there with Luka on the team? Any spot up shooter around Luka would love him, but they'd still have to make shots. So at best, what are the Hawks with Luka? 19 - 15? Especially with the injuries we've had. Eventually, Luka is going to have to learn how to play with another All-Star caliber player. Or worse, he may have to give up playing the point and let someone else play it. The addition of Kemba Walker actually helps that team, because it gives them another ball handler on the floor and Luka can play more inside the paint.

While this may be true, some of the other GMs didn't think that Luka's game would fully translate to the NBA style in a superstar like way. It's funny how we get the most grief for trading him, when Phoenix and Sacramento straight passed him up. Even Memphis at 4, pretty much put out that they were taking JJJ, even if Luka was still on the board. Luka was not a consensus slam dunk pick. So if you're a franchise like Atlanta, who have decided to tear everything down the year before and rebuild, you make a decision on which would be the best short and long term decision for the franchise. Trust and believe with the way Luka plays, and the big shots he makes, he would absolutely be a hit in Atlanta. But Trae IS more entertaining to watch, mainly because he's smaller and the things he does out on the court seem like it takes a lot more effort. Luka, because of his size, looks to just coast throughout the game, much like James Harden does. Stuff comes very easy to him. With Trae, you know he's working for everything he's trying to get, ala Allen Iverson.

To drive this point home even further, I like to do a comparison on where our guys rank, per position. And these rankings are by NBA Efficiency, which is mainly a production stat that highly ranks players that fill up the box score. When looking at this, my criteria has always been this ( in terms of perceived impact ) top 5 at position: Superstar impact 6 - 10 at position: All-Star impact 11 - 15 at position: good impact starter / great 6th man 16 - 30 at position: solid starter / good 6th man 31 - 45 at position: solid bench player 46 - 60 at position: fringe bench player 60+ at position: bench warmer / garbage minutes PG: Young ( 8 ) - Murray ( 12 ) - A Holiday ( 72 ) - Forrest ( 77 ) G: Bogi ( 21 ) - Krejci ( 96 ) SF: Hunter ( 29 ) - AJ ( 40 ) - J Holiday ( 74 ) PF: Collins ( 17 ) - J. Johnson ( 58 ) C : Capela ( 10 ) - Okongwu ( 32 ) - Frank ( 75 ) I mean, let's not be jaded on the amount of talent this team has right now. We have 6 guys who really know what they're doing, with the rest of the team either being young talent that hasn't reached their peak, or guys who should never really see the floor unless it's garbage time. We're playing Murray at the 2 alongside Trae, plus letting him be our floor leader with the 2nd unit, so his production and impact is where it should be, if not a little higher. But if we truly wanted to be a higher level team, we need at least 1 more guy playing at that top 15 level at his position, or a few of our bench players playing inside the top 30 at their position. And on top of that, we probably need Trae playing at Superstar level every night, which may suppress some of the other guys who make their impact from a scoring standpoint. But when your team lacks talent, your offensive alpha dogs need to have a legit shot to carry the team. If he can't do it, others have to be able to step up. If they can't consistently do it, you have a mid-level team that hovers around the .500 mark.

We have one of the weakest benches in the league. With Bogi in the starting lineup, who is going to provide the firepower off the bench? People want AJ to be that guy, but he's a rookie and is going to be inconsistent. This is what we rolled with last night off the bench. How many of these guys would crack the rotation on a top 20 team? Frank only played in 9 games last year and has only played in 111 games since 2019 Justin Holiday started at Sac and Indy, but shot 39% FG for the year Aaron Holiday only played in 22 games last year, as an end of the bench player Vit only played in 30 games at OKC and has only played in 46 NBA games in his career Tyreke Martin is a late 2nd rd pick castaway Forrest is similar to Aaron Holiday as an end of bench guy Jalen Johnson has played in a total of 54 games and a measley 619 minutes. And once again, AJ is a rookie So you take 2 starters out of the lineup and place 2 of our best bench players in their place, and what do you have off the bench? And the bad thing is that outside of AJ, none of these guys are above average in anything else that they bring to the table as a basketball player. Unless we add to that final roster spot and try to upgrade the talent in the rotation, our only shot is to rely heavily on our starters, and hope the kids ( AJ, OO, JJ really find their groove as consistent role players ).

Since you didn't want to play . . . this is the team last year that was in a lot of turmoil, and questioning if they should either tweak it, or trade one of their star players. Here's a dissenting opinion, making a case for them to stay together. And this is how they fixed it

He was part of trying to upgrade the overall talent. And I think we did that. That still doesn't make up for all of the players we lost. We still have a roster spot open, which won't be filled because the owner isn't trying to spend any more money.

This is exactly right. There's a big difference between a bench of ( Wright, Bogi, Gallo, Lou, OO ), which was a quality, veteran led group . . than a bench like ( Bogi, AJ, JJ, OO, the Holidays ) AJ is going to be real good. We all know that. But he's still a rookie. And while his offense is good, his defense is below average ( as most rookie's defense are ). If Schlenk/Ressler was serious about being in the upper level of the playoff mix this year, they wouldn't have stocked this team with rookie/end of bench level guys, and expected them to play meaningful rotation minutes. That's why I'm a little bit more patient than most. I think Nate has no choice but to continue to give AJ and Jalen meaningful minutes, in order for them to keep developing throughout the season. Maybe by the end of the season, both will be able to be more consistent in their production and impact on a game.

They had also lost 7 of their last 10 games at that point

Yep. Imagine if this team blew it up. Their fan base was definitely disgruntled and wanted something drastic done. Name this team. The 16 18 was that team's record ( 16 - 18 ) on December 27th of last year.

Knicks fans going crazy over how they lost tonight. They were up by 9 with under 30 seconds to go. Luka intentionally misses a 2nd FT and caught his own rebound in the air and put it in with 1 second left. He was fantastic tonight, mainly because he used his size to bully Quentin Grimes in the paint all night.

What good is "blowing it up" with Young going into his prime? If you blow it up, Trae is gone. All teams go through growing pains. This team either has to figure it out, or make a few changes. The last thing you do right now, is blow it up.

Now afterwards, it may have been proven that we had 2 of the 3 best . . even 5 of the best 7 players. But going into that series, I don't think people thought of us like that. We were the 5th seed. And 90% of the sports world thought we were going to lose that series.

Didn't the Knicks beat us 3 - 0 in that regular season, with Randle playing in beast mode and Rose also killing us? With most sportswriters picking us to lose in 6 games, I bet they would disagree that we had 2 of the best 3 players in that series. There's even debate as to if they would've picked Trae to be the best player, especially with the way Randle was playing in the 2nd half of that season.

And that's normally when something like that will happen, especially if we go on a losing streak.

Pacers scored 30+ points in every quarter. The only time we got stops in this game, was in the beginning when they were ice cold, and for that 2 - 3 minute stretch in the 4th. We cut it to 6, and they immediately go on a 17 - 3 run in a 3 minute span, to blow the game wide open.

We'll win tomorrow night, if Trae is healthy. You know how this goes.

I would love to do a small trade for Terry Taylor. Hawks fans would love him, because he plays hard, even though he's very undersized at 6-4.

That 4th quarter was not Nate's fault. Now Trae just turning his ankle in a 20 point game with 4 minutes left? Definitely blame that on Nate. But even with that, shoot the damn ball Trae. Just shoot the 3 . . . smh.

This was a defensive effort loss. Murray played a horrible defensive game. We've been outrebounded by 9. Trae - Murray are a combined 9/26 FG. The only coaching blunder Nate made tonight, was playing Justin Holiday in the 1st half and tried to play small.

Crazy that a jumpshooting team, fouled both of our bigs out.

Coaching is not why we lost this game. He actually coached a decent game. Hawks played about 3 minutes of defense tonight.

Welp . . game over. Get your fantasy points Haliburton.

Good minutes Jalen. Rest quickly, because you'll probably be right back in the game very soon.

Hawks can still win the game, but the max we probably can score is another 22 points. That means we need to hold the Pacers to 10 points. Err . . 8