The Rookie Curve: The Hawks Need De’Andre Hunter As Much As He Needs Them
Atlanta gave up a haul to nab Hunter in the draft. But if he fits as well as the team thinks he will, he could become a major contributor and the Hawks could become major players for star free agents a lot sooner than you think.
The summer is a time to dream big about newly drafted rookies. But paths to NBA stardom are never linear, and every rookie has a unique set of roadblocks to overcome before they can capitalize on their potential. Over the next few weeks, Jonathan Tjarks will be examining some of the 2019 draft’s top talents and how their team’s situation will affect their freshman season. Welcome to the Rookie Curve.
The Hawks gave up a king’s ransom for De’Andre Hunter. They traded two first-round picks (no. 8 and no. 17), an early second-round pick (no. 35), and a heavily protected first-rounder in 2020, and they absorbed the final season of Solomon Hill’s contract (later flipped for Chandler Parsons and a Plumlee) to move up four spots and take Hunter at no. 4. The cost is even higher when you count the trade that swapped Taurean Prince for the final season of Allen Crabbe’s massive contract ($18.5 million) and the no. 17 pick from the Nets. In most situations, Hunter would need to become an All-Star-caliber player to justify all that the Hawks gave up to get him. But the beauty of the team they’ve built is that they don’t need him to be. They just need him to complement the players they already have.
Few NBA teams are as disciplined as the Hawks when it comes to sticking to a long-term plan. In three drafts under GM Travis Schlenk, Atlanta has targeted skill sets more than players. The front office identifies specific types of players whose games complement one another and then moves around the draft to acquire them, without worrying about their abilities in a vacuum. They are putting on a team-building clinic.
The Hawks have now added five key players in the past three drafts: John Collins (no. 19 in 2017), Trae Young (no. 5 in 2018), Kevin Huerter (no. 18 in 2018), Hunter (no. 4 in 2019), and Cam Reddish (no. 10 in 2019). The unusual part is that all five can play in a lineup together. Atlanta head coach Lloyd Pierce may start a more traditional big man like Alex Len at the 5, but he could close games with these five young players in his own version of the Lineup of Death: Young at the 1, Collins at the 5, and three 3-and-D wings around them.
Everything starts with Young, who is coming off an impressive rookie season in which he averaged 19.1 points on 41.8 percent shooting and 8.1 assists per game. Young is a 20-year-old with the same skill set as many of the best point guards in the NBA: high-volume 3-point shooting (6.0 attempts per game) and elite passing (8.1 assists on 3.8 turnovers per game). He already makes the players around him better. He can shoot off the dribble almost as soon as he crosses half court, forcing defenses to cover more ground than ever before in NBA history, and he can find the open man anywhere on the floor.
Everyone knew about Young’s offense coming into the draft. The big concern was his defense. At 6-foot-2 and 180 pounds with a 6-foot-3 wingspan, he’s an undersized point guard with only average athleticism who has never shown much ability on that end of the floor. The only way for a team with Young to be good defensively is to surround him with length and athleticism on the perimeter. The Hawks, who now have three of the biggest wings in the NBA, are doing that:
- Huerter: 6-foot-7 and 190 pounds with a 6-foot-8 wingspan
- Reddish: 6-foot-9 and 208 pounds with a 7-foot-1 wingspan
- Hunter: 6-foot-7 and 225 pounds with a 7-foot-2 wingspan
The biggest challenge in targeting wings with elite size and athleticism in the draft is that few can consistently shoot 3s—think of recent lottery busts like Josh Jackson and Stanley Johnson. Without other perimeter players who can stretch the floor, defenders could sag in the lane and force the ball out of Young’s hands. That should not be an issue with any of the young wings in Atlanta:
- Huerter shot 38.5 percent from 3 on 4.7 attempts per game as a rookie.
- Reddish, although an inconsistent 3-point shooter (33.3 percent) in college, has a smooth-looking stroke as well as two positive statistical indicators for projecting his ability in the NBA: high-volume 3-point shooting (7.4 per game) and above-average free throw shooting (77.2 percent on 3.2 attempts per game).
- Hunter shot 41.9 percent from 3 on 2.3 attempts per game and 77.3 percent from the free throw line on 3.6 attempts per game in two seasons at Virginia. Those numbers may even understate his shooting ability because of the number of shots that he had to create for himself. According to the tracking numbers at Synergy Sports, Hunter was in the 90th percentile of college players in catch-and shoot attempts last season and in the 45th percentile when shooting off the dribble.
All three players can space the floor around a pick-and-roll between Young and Collins. Collins, a rising star who will turn 22 in September, averaged 19.5 points on 56.0 percent shooting, 9.8 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per game last season. At 6-foot-10 and 235 pounds, he can run and jump with any big man in the league. He should be even better next season since defenses will not be able to send as much help toward him when he rolls to the rim.
Schlenk, an assistant GM in Golden State before coming to Atlanta, is clearly trying to re-create his old team. It’s unrealistic to expect Young to be as good as Steph Curry, Collins to be as good as Draymond Green, or Huerter to be as good as Klay Thompson. What Schlenk is gambling on is that putting players with similar skill sets in the same types of lineups can create roughly similar results.
Hunter fits better within the context of re-creating the Warriors than almost any of the players taken after him in the draft. He’s bigger and stronger than either Huerter or Reddish, which should allow him to match up with the biggest wings in the NBA. He already knows how to play both team and individual defense after spending three seasons learning from Tony Bennett, one of the best defensive coaches in the NCAA. Virginia just won the NCAA championship largely because Hunter was a key part of a versatile defensive frontcourt that could defend the paint and the 3-point line at a high level. Hunter is strong enough to hold his own in the post and quick enough to switch screens and stay in front of smaller players on the perimeter.
Hunter should also make the Hawks better on offense. He isn’t just a spot-up shooter; he averaged 15.2 points on 52.0 percent shooting last season and carried Virginia down the stretch of the NCAA championship game, finishing with 27 points on 8-for-16 shooting. His ability to create his own shot and attack mismatches will make him more valuable than most players in 3-and-D roles. Hunter won’t be a primary option on offense early in his NBA career, but he will at least force the opposing team to keep a credible wing defender on him.
This is where the synergy really kicks in. Hunter, Huerter, and Reddish all can attack a mismatch, which means there’s nowhere on the perimeter to hide a poor defender. A team that wants to move its point guard off the ball on defense and put its best wing defender on Young will be in trouble. Only point guards with elite size for their position will be able to hold up against a 6-foot-7 wing, which means most will have to stay on Young. It is the opposite of what Atlanta can do with Young on defense. Point guards will have to guard Young, but he won’t have to guard them. Golden State’s ability to do the same thing with Curry has been one of the underrated keys to its success in the playoffs.
However, for as well as Hunter fits in Atlanta, he’s far from a perfect prospect. Most statistical models frowned on taking him in the top five: FiveThirtyEight had him at no. 14, Kevin Pelton of ESPN had him at no. 15, and ESPN’s in-house statistical model had him all the way down at no. 25. The models share a couple of major concerns. Hunter’s an older prospect (a redshirt sophomore who turns 22 in December) who didn’t have much of a statistical impact in the NCAA beyond scoring. He was an average rebounder (5.1 per game) and a below-average passer (2.0 assists and 1.4 turnovers) with limited block (0.6) and steal (0.6) averages for a player with his defensive reputation.
The reasons for those poor numbers were easy to spot on the court in college. Hunter is a good but not great athlete without great instincts on either end of the floor. He’s a methodical player who doesn’t have much burst off the dribble, which makes it hard for him to create efficient shots against high-level defenders, and he doesn’t read the floor particularly well. He can make basic passes off the dribble, but he’ll never be a point forward.
The NBA player Hunter most resembles is probably Harrison Barnes, which is not a great value for someone taken no. 4 overall, especially considering the number of picks the Hawks gave up to get him. It just doesn’t matter to them because Barnes, one of the members of the Lineup of Death when the Warriors won their first NBA title in 2015, is all they need Hunter to be.
None of Hunter’s flaws should hold him back in Atlanta. Young will create open shots for him, and all of the 3-point shooting around Hunter will mean that he will play in a lot of space. No one will be sending double-teams at him in the NBA, and he will get the benefit of attacking when the defense is already scrambling. Even though Hunter’s defenders will be quicker and faster in the NBA, they will be coming from farther away. His life should be much easier than it was in college, and in turn, he should make life easier for the other members of the Hawks core.
There would have been no way for Atlanta to create a team that fit this well together if it had stood pat and taken the best available players. The Hawks acquired three of their five core players in trades. They received an extra pick by trading down last year (getting the pick that became Reddish by moving down from no. 3 to no. 5 in 2018 so the Mavs could take Luka Doncic) and cashed in their surplus of picks one year later to move up to take Hunter. It’s a risky strategy. There were more talented players on the board at no. 4. Atlanta needs the rest of its core to make Hunter better than he would have been if he had gone almost anywhere else.
Creating a Basketball Nirvana is the best (and maybe only) way to turn Atlanta into an appealing destination. It is already working. Hunter and his representatives were selective in the teams they dealt with during the pre-draft process. He withdrew from the combine, creating speculation that he had received a promise. He didn’t work out for the Knicks (no. 3) or Pelicans (no. 1 and no. 4 heading into draft night), but he did for the Hawks, even though their highest pick at the time was below his projected range.
The Hawks should be one of the most exciting young teams in the NBA over the next few seasons. They play a 3-point-heavy style with the type of versatile defensive cast that could be very appealing to a superstar in free agency, much like the Nets were this offseason. They don’t have any bad salaries on their books, either; the only deals past 2020-21 are rookie contracts. They will have acres of cap space ahead of them. Collins won’t be eligible for an extension until the summer of 2021, and Young won’t be up for one until 2022.
The player that every team in the league will target is Giannis Antetokounmpo, who will be an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2021. The Hawks could create a pretty appealing situation for him. They will have the cap space to let him choose a costar on a max contract in the same way Kawhi Leonard just did with Paul George, while still having a potentially elite point guard, elite big man, and waves of 3-and-D wings on their roster. If Hunter and the rest of their young core develops in the way they hope, a team trying to be the next Warriors will have a slot for its version of Kevin Durant.
