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tbhawksfan1 wrote:Congrats to Nate. He looks like he is going to keep his job long-term

Jamaaliver wrote:

tbhawksfan1 wrote:Congrats to Nate. He looks like he is going to keep his job long-term

I have to ask...is that a good thing?

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tbhawksfan1 wrote:

Jamaaliver wrote:

tbhawksfan1 wrote:Congrats to Nate. He looks like he is going to keep his job long-term

I have to ask...is that a good thing?

A little strange that you ask if it would be a good thing and then your two twitter posts....

It certainly looks like a good thing to me. Nate has tranformed this team and as your tweeters suggest, this isn't his first success.

Jamaaliver wrote:

tbhawksfan1 wrote:

Jamaaliver wrote:

I have to ask...is that a good thing?

A little strange that you ask if it would be a good thing and then your two twitter posts....

It certainly looks like a good thing to me. Nate has tranformed this team and as your tweeters suggest, this isn't his first success.

I like Nate as a coach. The players have obviously responded well to him, and I wouldn't hate if he took the job FT. But I don't believe he gets us to championship contention. I don't believe that Trae becomes an All-NBA/MVP caliber superstar under his tutelage.

The enemy of good is great; and I want a great team. Just making the playoffs is no longer enough.

(There's a reason Nate McMillan was fired last summer and not offered another HC position immediately like Doc Rivers.)

The Hawks Are in the Right Places at the Right Time

Atlanta struggled with the freedom granted under Lloyd Pierce, but has found new life in Nate McMillan’s more structured system



Some coaching changes are intended to transform a team. Others are simply meant to remind them of what they were always supposed to be. Unsurprisingly, McMillan has the young Hawks on a steady march (or flight?) toward competence, with a 16-5 record in his tenure achieved largely by beating the sorts of teams Atlanta should beat but hadn’t previously. The wins the Hawks pulled off this week were beyond them a few months ago; this is now a club that can deliver a winning streak on the road, missing not only Trae Young and John Collins but six key rotation players in total.

Getting by without that much shot creation wouldn’t be possible unless a team is practiced in its ball movement, which is to say it wouldn’t be possible without a confidence in the designs McMillan brought to bear. Every developing team eventually has to confront some version of this same idea: Is the clearest way forward to give players more freedom or more structure? The answer very much depends on the people involved. Not all “young talent” functions the same; the needs of a team run by a 19-year-old point guard might be dramatically different from one relying on a 19-year-old center. Atlanta’s roster has youth all over, but having experienced a kind of freedom under Pierce and a different discipline under McMillan, the team’s record speaks—loudly, emphatically—to their apparent need.

“One of the things I talk about with our guys is getting organized,” McMillan says.

Under Pierce, it was too easy for the shooters on the weak side of the floor to idle in their spots while Young and Clint Capela worked the pick-and-roll. Young actually has the ball in his hands even more under McMillan according to NBA Advanced Stats, but he’s using that time differently when he’s waiting for Kevin Huerter to clear a screen for an open 3 instead of pounding his dribble to dictate the action himself.

It’s no wonder the Hawks are beginning to find their calm. Even Atlanta’s late-game nightmares seem to have abated; after ranking 30th in fourth-quarter net rating under Pierce, Atlanta has posted the second-best mark in the final frame during McMillan’s time at the head of the bench.

There is obvious value in a coach pulling the right levers at the right time; leaning on Gallinari to help close out games (and sometimes entire fourth quarters), for one, has made Atlanta a notably more flexible team. But so much of the Hawks’ recent success comes from the certainty of structure, and the safety in knowing where the guardrails are.