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Hawks’ preseason games have all been announced

The Hawks are expected to announce their preseason schedule for the 2019-20 season in the near future. However, with the Hawks previously announcing their opening game and four opponents announcing their slates, all five exhibitions are now known.

Jamaaliver wrote:

Carter should receive accolades for the way his game has changed and he is the rare case of a superstar perfectly morphing into a quality role player. 

Parker was better at the rim for Washington compared to Chicago, shooting 71 percent (91/128), ranking him in the 82nd percentile among power forwards, compared to a 66 percent mark playing in the Bulls’ system. He also ranked in the 92nd percentile among fours in field goal percentage in the short midrange (51 percent), and the 75th percentile among power forwards from the midrange entirely (44 percent) once joining the Wizards. This skill will be important when Parker is tasked with much of the scoring load while playing with a second unit that could lack pure shot-making ability around the sixth-year forward.

The offensive upside is obviously what attracted Atlanta to Parker, as he should slide in as the team’s sixth man and potentially be the third- or fourth-leading scorer on the club. The question mark with Parker has always been the defensive end of the floor, and that’s the area of concern the team will likely have with him given the lack of experience he’s largely surrounded by.

Alex Len is coming off of a season in which he added a critical skill for a big man in the modern NBA: he added an actual perimeter shot. After launching just 29 three-point attempts during his first five seasons in the league, all with the Phoenix Suns, he converted an impressive 36.3 percent of his 204 attempts last season. For the first time in his career, Len delivered consistent offensive value for an entire NBA season.

Most of the improvement that Len needs to demonstrate as to grow his value is on the defensive end of the court. He is a solid rim protector. Opponents converted 57.6 percent of shots inside of six feet when Len was defending in the paint last season, which is not a significant distant from the best shot blockers in the league, such as Rudy Gobert (51.6 percent) and Joel Embiid (52.2 percent). However, that’s not going to be quite good enough for a big man that is largely limited to drop coverage when defending the pick-and-roll. He’s a good athlete for a player that measures in at 7’1 and 250 pounds, so if he shows some improvement this season in defending on the perimeter, or at least at the point of attack in ball screen actions, it would not be completely unexpected.