Atlanta Hawks playoff preview: Nobody gives the East’s best team any respect

Raise your hand if you had the Hawks getting 60 wins and topping the Eastern Conference by seven games. Nobody should have their hands up.

Sure, the Hawks brought back the nucleus of a team that scrapped to the playoffs without Al Horford last season and probably should have beaten the Pacers in the first round. But nobody could have predicted this level of success, not with the upgrades the rest of the East made and especially not given the racial turmoil that enveloped the organization this summer. A so-so start turned into a magical 37-4 run that stretched from December to early February. Four starters represented the club at the NBA All-Star Game, the ultimate triumph of team over individual.

The Hawks faded a bit after the all-star break, but still enter the playoffs with as good a chance to win the title as any time in franchise history.

How they beat you
You’ll hear a lot about the Hawks’ unselfishness over the next few weeks, but the real key to their success is that every player can shoot. Only the Clippers and Warriors posted a higher effective field goal percentage than the Hawks this season, and only the Warriors shot a higher percentage from the three-point range.

That space lubricates Atlanta’s movement, passing and screening. The Hawks don’t run a lot of set plays. Instead, they have a few basic alignments and read and react off those. It’s organized chaos that works because everyone is a high-IQ player that understands spacing and will set screens. Atlanta leverages threats, whether it’s Kyle Korver’s three-point shooting, Jeff Teague and Dennis Schroeder penetrating, Paul Millsap slipping on a pick and roll, Al Horford charging to the rim or anything else. The second the defense takes one threat away is when the Hawks have you beat, because they’re really trying to get you with another.

The Hawks’ defense works in the opposite way. They know most teams have primary threats and less developed secondary options, so they tilt their coverages to force teams to do what they don’t want to do. It’s common to see Korver venture way off his man to zone against a star player trying to isolate or run a pick and roll. Great players usually find ways to beat this kind of coverage, but the Hawks confuse them because all five players rotate like they’re tied together.

This allows the Hawks to force lots of turnovers without fouling. The Hawks are third in the league in both opponents’ turnover ratio and fewest free throws surrendered per shot attempt.

Smart teams can anticipate Atlanta’s defense pressure and slip into open spaces. The Hawks surrender the most three-point attempts per game in the league, and while teams shot just 34 percent on those attempts, that number will go up as the opponents get better. The Cavaliers, a likely conference Finals opponent, recently had success sliding Kevin Love to the three-point line on pick and pops before traps arrived. The Raptors went 3-1 against the Hawks by using Patrick Patterson in a similar way.

The Hawks are a poor rebounding team. Opponents grab 26.7 percent of available offensive rebounds, eighth-worst in the league. The Hawks don’t have much size behind Horford, and their overloading defense works against them on the glass because the non-threats they leave sneak in for offensive boards before they can be boxed out.

There’s also a school of thought that the Hawks’ offense won’t be as effective in the playoffs because teams have more time to scout their system. Teams with similar-sized wings have switched different players onto Korver as he runs off screens, lessening his impact. The Hawks have multiple potential “go-to guys” in late-game situations, but Teague in particular can be pressured into poor decisions.

Most important player
Kyle Korver isn’t the best player on the Hawks (that’s Al Horford and I’ll accept no other arguments), but he’s the one that best defines their style. The Hawks’ free-flowing offense works only because Korver is simultaneously the most dangerous three-point shooter in the league and an Energizer Bunny that never stops running. That he does this at age 34 is nothing short of amazing.

Teams abandon their defensive principles to make sure Korver never gets a peek at a shot, which opens opportunities elsewhere.

Take Korver out and those openings disappear. The Hawks score 111 points per 100 possessions with Korver in and just over 99 with him out, even though they mix and match starters with reserves more than most teams in the league. That’s the largest swing among Hawks starters.

Social media done right
If you choose to pull for the Hawks, you’re rooting for the most innovative marketing department in the league. The Hawks must push the envelope due to their precarious position in the local sports scene, which is why you get things like Tinder Night, CEO 2 Chainz, hidden Spotify messages, the best arena musician and the funniest Twitter account in sports.

You can thank CEO Steve Koonin for the change. The former Coca Cola and Turner executive has worked tirelessly to bring young, African American fans to the arena, rejecting the previous attitudes that led to former managing partner Bruce Levenson’s racist email. As ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz wrote in this must-read feature, Koonin and the Hawks “are coming as close to a write-off of the suburban white fan as a team possibly can.”

So far, it’s working, thanks to the team’s success and the Hawks’ marketing strategy.