THE ATLANTA HAWKS don’t have a point guard.
It seems like a jarring statement, especially for a team that features Trae Young, who led the NBA in total assists a season ago. This summer the Hawks added Dejounte Murray, who finished fourth in the league in assists per game while playing for the San Antonio Spurs last season.
Two All-Star point guards sharing a backcourt — but neither one a point guard.
That’s how Nate McMillan sees it.
“Those guys I’m calling ‘the guards’ this year,” the Hawks coach said prior to a preseason game in Birmingham, Alabama, last month. “Both guys will be handling the ball and initiating offense.
“We’re doing a little different things than what we’ve done in the past.”
In the past, Young has been the unquestioned leader of Atlanta’s offense. He’s averaged 27.8 points and 9.5 assists per game over the past three seasons, leading the Hawks to a surprising run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2021. But after last season’s disappointing first-round exit, Atlanta brought in Murray to help share the load — and prove the Hawks were serious about being a contender in a stacked Eastern Conference.
The challenge now for McMillan is to figure out how to take two ball-dominant guards and get them to mesh in time to have the same kind of postseason success Young had on his own two years ago.
Or, as Young tweeted when news of the trade broke: “This 💩 just got real.”
THE HAWKS WEREN’T supposed to be an Eastern Conference finalist in 2021. The previous season they went 20-47, so far removed from the playoff picture that they weren’t invited to the NBA’s bubble when the season resumed following the COVID-19 shutdown. The next season got off to another losing start, resulting in the firing of coach Lloyd Pierce after 34 games, at which point Atlanta was 11th in the East.
Atlanta turned things around quickly, going 27-11 under McMillan, upsetting the New York Knicks in the first round of the playoffs, then stunning the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games before falling to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks in the conference finals.
That success led Atlanta’s front office to believe it already had a championship contending roster in place — a belief that proved to be misguided.
Running it back with essentially the same group, the Hawks finished 43-39 and were the ninth seed in the East. They won their way through the play-in tournament to gain the eighth seed but fell to the Miami Heat in five games.
The lack…
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