How exactly can we address last night’s loss at home to the Orlando Magic without coming off as reactionary? For starters, maybe some context can help. As you are probably aware the emergence of a COVID-19 spike is absolutely decimating portions of the country and the NBA. Over 100 players have entered health and safety protocols this month. Among those include Trae Young, Danilo Galinari, Kevin Huerter, Clint Capela, and Lou Williams. Injuries haven’t helped either — DeAndre Hunter is still nursing a wrist issue that he underwent surgery for.
Despite listing all of those caveats, this isn’t an Atlanta-specific issue. Basically every team in the league is facing some kind of adversity due to COVID, the Magic included who were without Cole Anthony, Jalen Suggs, Terrence Ross, Mo Bamba, and Wendell Carter Jr.
Accordingly, it’s hard to take stock in this stretch of games where teams are going to be playing with rosters that will look entirely different once players can begin getting healthy again. Still, I do think that the Hawks haven’t been trending in the right direction and last night was another microcosm of how difficult this season has been for last year’s Eastern Conference Finals representatives.
The offense has been this team’s calling card, but only when Trae Young has been on the floor. Atlanta has outscored opponents by 11.2 points when he’s been in the action, but the drop off without Ice Trae is shocking. Numbers aside, no one on this team can create their own shot or compromise a set defense in a meaningful way besides Young. Huerter and Bogdanovich have some second-side playmaking chops but this aspect of their game is mainly effective when you already have an offense-generator like Trae on the court.
Otherwise, relying on either to carry that load for an entire game is asking for trouble — Bogdanovich, who returned to the lineup last night after dealing with ankle problems looked out of sorts, especially as a lead creator. To be fair, it will probably take some time for the Serbian sniper to get his groove back, and that process will look more fluid once Trae emerges from COVID protocols. In his return, Bogdanovich was on a minutes restriction and only mustered 2-of-9 (22.2%) shooting to go along with some puzzling drives to the lane that went nowhere.
The biggest knock on Collins’ game is probably his inability to create his own shot. This flaw is going to be magnified on a team where he is one of the few healthy players on the roster. He finished with 23 points on 7-of-15 shooting and 11 rebounds, but those numbers didn’t mean much in a game that never really felt close.
“It’s the same old story,” Collins said after the loss. “We take bad shots. Don’t play defense. Don’t rebound. We lose. We got to fight our way back into the game … You look around the locker room and half of the guys are missing. You look and you see new faces. How mad can we really get?”
The lone bright spot from the night was Cam Reddish who dropped a career high of 34 points on 12-of-24 (50%) shooting, which included 6/10 from deep and 6-8 at the line. He showed all the flashes that have Hawks fans marveling at his eventual place on this roster. Aside from a hot shooting night, Reddish got to the rim and made floaters in the paint, guarded the Magic’s best player in Franz Wagner, and attacked in transition. The only issue with this performance is that it isn’t exactly replicable for reasons beyond Cam’s control. His development is at odds with where Atlanta believes this team can go. Reddish won’t get 42 minutes and over 20 shots, with the whole roster back, and this inconsistent role seems to bother his production (understandably so!). Hopefully he can keep picking his spots as the team gets healthy, otherwise I think Travis Schlenk needs to re-evaluate what this team can be in the present moment.
