Yesterday, the Atlanta Hawks took down the Oklahoma City Thunder for their 15th straight victory. The streak is a a franchise high, and the game really emphasized just how good this team has been this year.
And team is the important word there.
This season, the Hawks don’t have a top 10 player in field goals. They have no players in the top 10 in minutes played. No Hawk is in the top 10 for blocks, win shares, rebounds, free throws or points.
Kyle Korver has the second-most 3’s in the league behind Wesley Matthews, Jeff Teague is seventh in assists and Paul Millsap just jumped into the top 10 for steals last night.
As many people have already noted, this isn’t a team that is built around one or two stars–but an actual basketball team. And whether it’s the pass first system that Budenholzer has implemented, or simply the fact that so many of the contributors are having career years–everything is going right for Atlanta.
That’s especially true for Korver and Teague.
Korver currently has a PER of 15.8, which is just a notch above league average, but is also the highest mark of his career. Where Korver’s really had an impact though is obviously shooting the basketball. He’s the most effecient shooter in the league–and it’s not even close.
His 51.6 field goal percentage is a career best and his 53.3 percent mark from deep is shy of just his 2009-10 season. When you look at true shooting percentage, Korver’s 73.8 percent is not only a career best. It’s the best in the league.
Teague on the other hand, has broken out in almost every way you could think of. His 22.8 PER is not ony the best on the team, it’s a huge leap from his previous best (17.1) from last season. His true shooting percentage, steal percentage, assist percentage an field goal percentage are all career-bests at the moment.
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While the other three starters haven’t seen the huge leaps in performance that Korver and Teague have seen this season, they’ve all been extremely good.
Al Horford is second on the team with a 20.9 PER (the second-highest of his career) and his assist percentage is a career high. Horford’s numbers across the board are actually all down from his last full season, but that certainly hasn’t hurt the team in any way. It speaks a lot to a player’s skillset when he’s scoring and rebounding less, but is still the second-most valuable player on the team.
DeMarre Carroll has the best true shooting percentage of his career and is scoring 13.3 points per game (also a career best) while playing some of the best defense on the team.
Paul Millsap is the second-leading scorer per game for the Hawks and is looking at his best true shooting percentage since his 2010-11 season with Utah.
It hasn’t all been the starters though. The bench has proven to be extremely useful and can fit Mike Budenholzer’s system as easily as the starters. The most obvious player to look at first is Dennis Schröder.
The second-year point guard has seen an uptick in minutes this season, and with that he’s improved his field goal percentage, his 3-point percentage (a slight improvement), his free throw percentage and his steal an assist numbers.
During his rookie campaign Schröder wound up with a measley 5.8 PER. This season, it’s all the way up to 14.2. One
Mike Scott‘s also coming off of the bench with a +14 PER, and even though his numbers haven’t been as impressive as last season he’s been extremely useful. Last year, Scott had to play more minutes per game for the team, but with less injury issues this year he’s playing in 15 per game–about three less than last season.
And while his shooting and rebounding numbers are down, along with most other players on the team his assist percentage at 10.3 is a career best.
Taking a look at the numbers of this Hawks team makes it a lot easier to see how they’re doing so well despite the lack of your sterotypical star. I assumed before writing this post that each of the players on the team were just having extremely good statistical years–that’s clearly not the case.
Sure, Teague, Korver and Schröder are having standout seasons for their careers, but the difference maker really looks like the assist numbers. Each of the players we’ve discussed here is passing the ball better than their career numbers would suggest, and most of them are doing so at a career-high level.
That’s what it looks like when players buy in to the system. And man, is it an awesome thing to see.