BS Report – Hawks: Trade Deadline
Tuesday night, the Atlanta Hawks beat the Miami Heat by the score of 127 to 115. The Hawks moved to within two games of the 500 mark at 25 and 27 on the season, and they were boosted by another triple double the night of the season by Jalen Johnson, who had 29 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. Johnson, now averaging 23.2 points, 10.5 rebounds and eight assists per game, which is pretty special.
And the Hawks obviously have a brand new star. With the trade of Trae Young to Washington several weeks ago. It’ll be interesting to see what happens before the trade deadline on Thursday at 3:00, to see if the Hawks make any moves at all to improve the roster or possibly rid themselves of a couple of expiring contracts, most notably Kristaps Porzingis, who was scheduled to play last night but instead came down with an illness again. And he is only playing in about a third of the 52 games for this Atlanta Hawks team. And that has been a very disappointing thing for them. No question about it. Go back to when the season began in late October, and we thought that we were going to have Trae Young obviously. And then Porzingis is the center. And yet we’re coming off the bench.
And instead we’ve had to see Okongwu start most of the games. Because again Porzingis has only played one third of the game so far. Trae Young of course was hurt in game five. Missed seven weeks and then got traded in January. And so obviously the initial course for this Atlanta Hawks team has been kind of thrown off the tracks, which has been unfortunate and truly with all the injuries that they’ve had with Trey being out for seven weeks, Porzingis missing two thirds of the season and even the 7 or 8 games missed by Zachary Research until recently.
It’s amazing the Hawks are where they are at 25 and 27, but having a star player like Jalen Johnson is so key for any team in the NBA. The NBA is a league that is all about stars. You have to have one and you really have to have more than that to be able to be a special team in this league. And that’s why the emergence of Jalen Johnson has been so key for this team this year. The Hawks have very good complementary players like Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who has gone from scoring a little over nine points last year for Minnesota coming off the bench to scoring over 20 this year for Atlanta, mostly in a starting role. Then you have, of course, Dyson Daniels, who’s one of the best defensive players in the league who has really stepped his game up.
It was particularly in assists where he’s averaged about two more assists per game this season, especially handling the ball more often with Trae Young out and then gone. Then you have Zaccharie Risacher who continues to show very strong signs that he, even as a 20 year old player, has a great future on this team. And of course, the Hawks are in a great position because they have two very good first round draft picks coming up in June with the New Orleans Pelicans or the Milwaukee Bucks pick, which is going to be a very high pick if the lottery falls their way. And of course, the pick for the Cleveland Cavaliers Atlanta zone pick belongs to San Antonio. Because the Dejounte Murray trade from a few years ago. So there’s a very good possibility the Hawks are going to add two more players young players to this quarter. And one of them could be very significant where there’s Darren Peterson of of Kansas or Cameron Boozer of Duke Jae demand of BYU.
Maybe, maybe Caleb Wilson, the kid originally from Atlanta who’s with North Carolina. You’ve got Kingston Flemings from Houston and Keaton Wagner from Illinois. Those are the top six players in the draft, and they all look like very special players. So the Hawks have 30 games left. They are still in the playoff hunt. Hopefully, if they can stay healthy for the rest of the time, they will have a chance. But to have a star player like Jalen Johnson emerge, who is second in the NBA this year in triple doubles behind the Joker out in Denver, that is a very special person to have on your roster and hopefully they can continue to get better, stay healthy and make a run for the playoffs into April.
