Where are the Atlanta Hawks headed after firing head coach Lloyd Pierce on Monday?
Pierce paid the price for the Hawks' slide in the standings after a promising start to a season that began with playoff expectations. Hit hard by injuries, Atlanta has gone 4-11 since starting the season 10-9 to drop to 11th in the Eastern Conference.
Can the Hawks get back into one of the spots in this year's inaugural NBA play-in tournament? And in the big picture, how competitive can an Atlanta team built around guard Trae Young be in years to come? Let's take a look.
Pierce never got a chance to integrate newcomers
This was supposed to be the season Atlanta's four-year rebuild under president and general manager Travis Schlenk paid playoff dividends. Pierce kicked off those expectations almost a year ago, before NBA play was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're going to level up," Pierce told reporters last March. "This team is a playoff team, and I told our guys. We're a playoff team. The guys in that room that will be back here understand that. Now it's about understanding what that means. We know it."
Those comments came before the Hawks' offseason spending spree. Entering free agency with more cap space than any other team, Atlanta aggressively added veterans, signing guards Kris Dunn and Rajon Rondo and forward Danilo Gallinari before making an offer sheet to restricted free agent Bogdan Bogdanovic that the Sacramento Kings chose not to match.
Unfortunately, injuries have prevented those newcomers from making an impact. Dunn never played a second for Pierce due to ankle surgery, while Bogdanovic has been sidelined since mid-January by an avulsion fracture in his knee. The relatively healthier players from this group have missed 14 (Rondo) and 12 (Gallinari) games; neither has been typically effective when on the court. Combined, the four players have contributed just 0.5 win above replacement level by my WARP metric.
Despite those injuries, Pierce still had the Hawks sixth in the East at the end of January before a miserable month of February. Atlanta didn't perform quite as poorly in the month as the team's 4-11 record would indicate. The Hawks were outscored by 4.0 points per game in that stretch, which would typically translate to between five and six wins on average instead of the four they got. Atlanta lost a pair of games by one point, missing out on wins that could have saved Pierce his job for a little longer.
Hawks poised for turnaround
Replacing Pierce is a favorable situation because no matter who's at the helm, Atlanta is likely to benefit from better luck the rest of the season. If the Hawks merely play to their break-even point differential, a .500 record would be an improvement the rest of the way. Atlanta is also likely to get healthier at some point. Bogdanovic could return after the All-Star break with starting small forward De'Andre Hunter -- out all of February after knee surgery -- due back at some point in April.
Thanks to those factors, FiveThirtyEight's projections have the Hawks more likely than not (55%) to make the playoffs. Projections using ESPN's Basketball Power Index are a bit more pessimistic on Atlanta's chances but still give them a 42% chance of reaching the play-in tournament and an 18.5% chance at the playoffs.
Naturally, a new head coach can make the biggest impact at the defensive end of the court. The Hawks' offense has been steadily above average during the month of February, but their defensive rating slipped from 22nd in the league on a per-possession basis entering February to 27th during their slump. The loss of Hunter, the team's best perimeter defender, has played a key role there.
Does Atlanta have contending core?
Let's take a step back from the rest of this season. The larger animating question for the Hawks heading into a decision on whether to trade John Collins before he hits restricted free agency this summer is whether they have the right core in place to compete in the East.
In addition to hurting the team on the court this season, the injuries have also made it more difficult to answer that question. On paper, the newcomers would have propped up a second unit that failed Atlanta in 2019-20. In practice, the team remains heavily dependent on Young's presence to create efficient offense. With him on the bench, the Hawks' offensive rating drops by 13.6 points per 100 possessions, according to NBA Advanced Stats.
With Hunter looking like the 3-and-D contributor the Hawks traded up to draft No. 4 overall in 2019 prior to his injury, Atlanta's starting lineup showed great promise. When Hunter was on the court with Young, Collins and new starting center Clint Capela, the Hawks' lineups ranked in the 98th percentile league-wide with a plus-14.0 net rating, per Cleaning the Glass. If that holds up, Atlanta can feel good about re-signing Collins and staying the course.
Alas, that net rating was compiled in a 426-possession sample, and the Hawks won't likely get Hunter back on the court before the trade deadline. So they'll be going on incomplete information as they make a decision on possible Collins trades.
Besides showing tangible progress in the rebuilding process, making the playoffs would also be illuminating about where Atlanta's budding stars stand. Can Young hold up in the playoffs when defenses scheme to take the ball out of his hands on offense and target him in the pick-and-roll defensively? Can the Hawks finish games with both Collins and Capela on the court?
It's easy to understand why Atlanta feels urgency to turn this season around. It's less clear a coaching change was necessary to do so.