HMFFL wrote: It's difficult to have an impact when our point guard shoots 40% from the field and leads the league in turnovers with 355 last season.However, those poor numbers don't concern some Hawk fans.
KP is perfect for a championship caliber team and I don't believe anyone expects him to play 60+ games and average or 30mpg. Thag's why we have depth. The man is 30 years old and needs to be extended. He needs to be on the team if 40% from the field and 355 turnovers guy is extended.
A discussion about KPs lack of available and his future as a Hawk turns into a referendum on the PG? If he misses too manu games and unavailable for the playoffs this year why would the Hawks look to bring him back?
The discussion was in the Trae Young thread.
You support Trae's 40% shooting and being a turnover machine, but that's a keeper? .
HMFFL wrote: It's difficult to have an impact when our point guard shoots 40% from the field and leads the league in turnovers with 355 last season.However, those poor numbers don't concern some Hawk fans.
KP is perfect for a championship caliber team and I don't believe anyone expects him to play 60+ games and average or 30mpg. Thag's why we have depth. The man is 30 years old and needs to be extended. He needs to be on the team if 40% from the field and 355 turnovers guy is extended.
A discussion about KPs lack of available and his future as a Hawk turns into a referendum on the PG? If he misses too manu games and unavailable for the playoffs this year why would the Hawks look to bring him back?
For seven seasons we continue to cycle thru players but Trae continues to get a pass. Now, we have a 30 year old game changer at the 5, but he might be a rental in the eyes of you and Jam.
Which of those cycled thru players would you have preferred to keep instead of Trae? What exactly is the pass he's getting? What have those players done since leaving Atlanta? Which of those players are being game planned against every single night? As long as Tony Ressler keeps the team hard capped at the Luxury Tax, it leads to speculation about guys on large expiring contracts. So for me it's less about Trae, more about the Hawks financial approach.
KP is one of those players you hold your breath whenever he plays. He has one of those bodies not ideal for contact. Can't really extend him for multiple seasons. I'd expect him to receiver 1 year offers.
With Porzingis’ mystery illness solved, Hawks are primed for NBA hunt
The Hawks, behind a renovated front office and roster, begin their most anticipated season in years when they open against the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday. Most projections place them above — some well above — the Play-In Tournament, a stage they’ve been unable to avoid for nearly half a decade. Their flashiest addition is the 7-foot-3 Porziņģis, a sweet-shooting, rim-protecting big man capable of changing the geometry of a team.
That is, as long as he is himself.
Entering the final year of his contract, Porziņģis is hoping to prove his impact once again.
He banged in 3-pointers, deterred drivers and dominated the post during 42 regular-season games in Boston last season, but a mysterious illness zapped him of his energy in the playoffs. Come the second round, he couldn’t run for long stints. At no point did he resemble the two-way star who had helped the Celtics to a title the season prior.
“It hit me, and it hit me like a truck,” Porziņģis said. “The breathing wasn’t good. I did everything I could potentially to feel as good as I could, but my engine wasn’t running the way I wanted.”
He scored only 25 total points during a six-game Eastern Conference semifinals loss after averaging more than 19 during the regular season.
Doctors later diagnosed him with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, he said, more commonly referred to as POTS, an autonomic condition that can dramatically increase a patient’s heart rate when standing up instead of spread horizontal. Handled wrong — or not yet diagnosed — and POTS can lead to extreme exhaustion or dizziness.
In his worst moments, Porziņģis’ heart rate could stabilize while he was lying down, but the act of standing up could rev it to 130 beats per minute.
Today, Porziņģis is on a mission to prove he has the zoomies.
He is eligible for a contract extension, though he said he is in no rush to sign one. Instead, he’d like to prove that his playoff performance was merely a one-off. Post-diagnosis, Porziņģis and his doctors know how to manage POTS — and it’s without the need for any special medication. A high-salt diet and a more regimented non-basketball resting schedule is a must.
He played with the Latvian national team during Eurobasket this summer without issue. He’s likely to start for Atlanta, displacing the former first-string center, Onyeka Okongwu, a 24-year-old up-and-comer who played his best ball ever to close last season.
Porziņģis is in a new place — but then again, so are the Hawks.
The Hawks’ first call to acquire Porziņģis wasn’t to the Celtics. To piecemeal the salaries necessary to land the center, they wanted to move Terrence Mann, a wing with three more years remaining on his contract. They knew Boston — heading into at best a gap year and at worst a rebuild — wouldn’t take back such a financial commitment.
This trade had to be a multi-teamer.
So the Hawks rang the Brooklyn Nets, one of the few teams with cap space. The cost of sending three years of Mann to Brooklyn was the No. 22 pick in the draft, one that the front office deemed acceptable since it also owned the 13th selection. The Hawks were already young and figured that too much inexperience at once could make developing talent more difficult.
Spoiler:
So the Hawks rang the Brooklyn Nets, one of the few teams with cap space. The cost of sending three years of Mann to Brooklyn was the No. 22 pick in the draft, one that the front office deemed acceptable since it also owned the 13th selection. The Hawks were already young and figured that too much inexperience at once could make developing talent more difficult.
Within a day, Atlanta had an agreement. The Hawks, coming off a 40-42 season, would send out Mann, Georges Niang, the No. 22 pick and a second-rounder for Porziņģis’ expiring contract, figuring if it didn’t work, they could save money in the long term — and if it did, they could acquire a rare type of talent, a big man who could drain 3s and block shots.
The idealized version of Porziņģis fits anywhere. But he is even cozier alongside the Hawks’ four-time All-Star point guard, Trae Young, a ludicrous passer and high-paced scorer whose defense requires a teammate or four on the back line to clean up mistakes.
Porziņģis provides a special type of weapon, and not just because he jacks 3s unlike any big man who’s previously teamed up with Young. Where he releases them from matters, too.
Defenses adjusted on Young last season, pressuring him more than ever. The average Hawks possession with Young bringing up the ball included a defender picking the 27-year-old up 46 feet away from the basket, according to Second Spectrum. That was comfortably the farthest average pick-up point of Young’s career.
In turn, he started to initiate possessions even closer to halfcourt.
Defenses might not be able to treat Young the same way if Porziņģis is setting the screen, not only because of the Latvian’s lightning release but also because he will hoist them from other area codes.
Get this: The average Young 3-pointer last season was from 28 feet, the farthest distance in the NBA, per Second Spectrum. Second place on that list belonged to Porziņģis, who nailed 41 percent of his long balls.
“It starts as much as everything with spacing,” Snyder said. “So if (Porziņģis) is popping, there’s other players as cutters that can put pressure on the rim, which gives Trae the outcome of a cutter comparable to a roller and a 7-footer that’s spacing.”
It seems as if he’s been around forever, that he’s already gone through too many careers to count.
Kristaps was the future of the New York Knicks, then a co-star of Luka Dončić, then an injury-riddled disappointment, then a sneaky comeback player of the year candidate (if there were such a thing) for a Washington squad no one watched, then a vital member of the champion Celtics until that once-mysterious ailment ruined his 2025 playoffs.
This is sneakily the NBA’s third-youngest team, one that could mold itself in various ways, depending on how the season goes. If the Hawks win inside a weak East, they could retain Young and/or Porziņģis. If they don’t, they can move forward with a clean cap sheet and a surplus of first-round picks. The veterans are vets more in name than in age. Five rotation players are under 25. Porziņģis — on the brink of a nursing home, compared to the rest of this roster — is the elder statesman. He just turned 30 this summer.
“We are an aspiring team, a young team that aspires to win a championship one day, and that’s the cool part,” Porziņģis said. “Even by the betting odds, we’re not too far off.”
The roster is young, the options are flexible — and that means ambitions are on the rise.
HMFFL wrote:After all these years we finally have an actual big man like KP and some of view him as a rental?
Kristaps Porziņģis fills just about every need we have at the 5. You guys are so use to undersized big men on our roster that you must enjoy losing. Is OO your answer at the 5 next season?
Some of you already think little man Onyeka Okongwu is going to be or should be the starter.
Next year's off-season will be interesting if we need to add depth at the 5 and let KP walk.
It's hard to have an impact on the games when you're injured on the bench...
I'm just going to not worry about injuries until they happen
HMFFL wrote:KP is perfect for a championship caliber team and I don't believe anyone expects him to play 60+ games or average 30mpg. That's why we have depth.
The man is 30 years old and needs to be extended.
Kristaps did look pretty damn good last night. Like the half court scorer this team has needed for years...
It's a nonsense because a "difference maker" is most of the time NOT a difference maker when coming to a new team mid-season. It can be right the following season, but for this season, trading a player that you needed to spread the floor for another one that you except having more impact while discovering the team in February... good luck
Unless it would KP+filler we don't need for a true Superstar, but even that, I doubt that it would work this season
