Welcome to my 30 teams in 30 days series, the most comprehensive and informative previews for every team in the NBA. Inside these posts, you’ll get up to speed with every team’s offseason additions and their roster hierarchies, learn whether they’ve addressed their biggest areas of need, ponder over 5 questions that will define their season and then decide whether you agree with my offseason grades and record predictions.
Notable Additions: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kennard, Keaton Wallace, Asa Newell, N’Faly Dante
Notable Subtractions: Clint Capela, Caris Levert, Georges Niang, Larry Nance Jr., Kobe Bufkin, Terance Mann
Depth Chart:
PG: Trae Young / Luke Kennard / Keaton Wallace
SG: Dyson Daniels/ Nickeil Alexander-Walker / Vit Krejci / Caleb Houstan
SF: Zaccharie Risacher / Nikola Djurisic / Jacob Toppin
PF: Jalen Johnson / Mouhamed Gueye / Asa Newell / Eli Ndiaye
C: Kristaps Porzingis / Onyeka Okongwu / N’Faly Dante
Roster Hierarchy:
Franchise: Trae Young
Core: Dyson Daniels, Jalen Johnson
Key Rotation: Zaccharie Risacher, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kennard, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Onyeka Okongwu
Rotation: Mouhamed Gueye, Vit Krejci, Keaton Wallace, N’Faly Dante, Jacob Toppin, Caleb Houstan
Development: Nikola Djurisic, Eli Ndiaye, Asa Newell
The Hawks front office, led by first-year GM Onsi Saleh, was hard at work this summer, cleaning up the previous regimes mistakes in an effort to avoid their FIFTH straight Play-In appearance this season. Saleh did a phenomenal job addressing the Hawks’ areas of need while maintaining financial flexibility, acquiring Luke Kennard & Nickeil Alexander-Walker in free agency, alleviating Boston’s tax situation by trading for Kristaps Porzingis’ expiring contract, adding some much needed additional positional size in the frontcourt — The Hawks had to play 3,031 possessions without true positional size/skillset the 4 last year, getting beat by 5.13 points per 100 possessions in those lineups.
A healthy Jalen Johnson will be joining KP and Onyeka Okongwu in one of the strongest frontcourts in the league, surrounding Trae Young with real size and length for the first time in his career. Onsi has positioned this team to be competitive in the East, using this year as an evaluation period to determine which aspects of the core will be offered extensions in the 2026 offseason, where the Hawks will reap the rewards of the unprotected lottery pick New Orleans so graciously offered them in return for moving down 10 spots in the 2025 draft.
🥇 Play Finishing/Positional Size: 1st in Shot Quality, 2nd in 3-Point Openness Rating, 15th in eFG%, 19th in 3-Point%
🥈 Connectivity: 13th in Hockey Assists per game (3.4), 26th in Touches/Poss (3.89)
🥉 Creation Upside: 30th in Self-Created Shot Making among Top 8 in Rotation
The Hawks have no one under 6’4 besides Trae Young, while adding 3 elite shooters who are all in the top 10th% off the catch.
1. What’s the next step for Jalen Johnson?
Jalen Johnson averaged a career-high 7.9 rim attempts per 100 and shot 72.1% at the rim, in a suboptimal offensive role last season. Spot-ups were his 2nd most frequent playtype (23% of of his playtype distribution), which minimized him on offense due to his shooting inconsistency and high-handle. He’s too good of an open-court athlete to be relegated to attacking closeouts against defenses that will sag off on him behind the 3P line.
Jalen initiated the offense at a career-high rate in the Hawks’ preseason games, bringing the ball up the floor as ATL’s primary ballhandler. He presents a massive defensive conflict for teams as a lead ballhandler, as he’s far too quick for the defensive players that can match his strength and too strong for wings that can keep up with him in space. The KP addition demands teams to keep their size on Porzingis — or he will immediately punish mismatches in the post — while his shooting gravity pulls bigs even further from the rim.
ATL using him to run actions from the top of the key maximizes his downhill ability AND unlocks Trae off-ball. JJ will also likely be Trae’s highest volume PNR partner, they were the league’s 2nd best PNR duo in the 2024 season and were the top assist duo in the league last year before Jalen went down.
I’m expecting that combo to be even more lethal in 2026, leveraging KP’s gravity and passing ability to generate even better runways for Jalen in the short roll.
2. Which Hawk can assume the “downhill driver” role?
Brown was the biggest beneficiary from KP’s shooting gravity, instinctually ripping through drives once he recognized Porzingis had drawn the opposing rim protector out of the paint. The Hawks lack an aggressive downhill driver that can approximate Jaylen Brown’s role for the Celtics.
Dyson is looking like ATL’s best bet to replicate JB’s downhill pressure, his handle has been much more fluid and controlled in ATL’s preseason games.Despite the upgrades in size, ATL still relies on finesse and craft more than strength when finishing around the rim. The Hawks had THREE (Trae, Jalen & Dyson) players in the top 10 in total floater FGA before Jalen went down.
Dys & JJ are way too effective rim finishers to have such high volume on floaters, which have a higher variance. 39% of Dyson’s FGA came from floater range, that needs to get under 30% for the Hawks to fully capitalize on the space KP is creating. The Hawks were able to take rely on floaters more when they had Capela, who’s a monster offensive rebounder.
He improved ATL’s OREB% by 2.7% over the last 5 years, snagging 15% of ATL’s missed FGA when he was on the floor. That floater volume HAS to turn into rim attempts when KP unlocks the 5-out lineups.
3. How will Quin Snyder manage the backup wing minutes?
The Hawks will be undersized at the 3 anytime Zacch1 is off the floor, despite increasing their avg height from 6’6.25” to 6’7.25”. Last year they played ~ 1400 mins of Vit/Garry/Mann at the 3, those minutes will be replaced by some combination of Dyson/NAW/Caleb/Djurisic/Toppin. Dyson and Nickeil are their best options to play backup 3, despite being better suited as guard POA defenders.
Dyson guarded SF & PF’s a combined 28.9% of his minutes, while matching up with guards 62% of the time. NAW had an extremely similar matchup split, guarding PGs & SGs for 67% of his matchups.
Caleb Houstan plays much smaller than his listed 6’8 (tallest player in the league with 0 career dunks), 2024 2nd round pick Nikola Djurisic still needs refinement with his positioning. Jacob Toppin could likely play some spot minutes, but he doesn’t bring the passing & turnover creation NAW/Dyson bring.
Dyson didn’t play much SF for the Hawks, but he was a +4 in 800+ possessions as a 3 for New Orleans.NAW played 44% of his minutes at SF in Minnesota, with a much stronger net rating as a 3 (+10.4) than as a 2 (+3.7).
That massive swing is mostly on offense, as MIN relied on him too much as a handler at the 2 (NAW’s +7.1 on-court net rating fell to just +0.3 in the minutes he played without Antman and Conley). ATL should be able to survive these minutes at a size disadvantage by pairing NAW or Dyson with a double-big look, alongside multiple handlers to keep the offense viable.
4. Will the Hawks be able to prove that the “traditional backup PG” is a dated concept in the modern NBA?
The traditional backup floor general is all but obsolete in the modern NBA, as the game has evolved to the point where wings & combo guards have good enough handle & feel to initiate plays. Employing a player under 6’4 who lacks scoring gravity in the pace and space era with mismatch hunting and motion offense running rampant is a losing proposition. These players are hunted relentlessly on defense and never provide enough offensive value to offset the defensive complications.
In the Hawks case, Trae will play 32-36 mins a night and they have a plethora of combo guards and wings (Dyson, NAW, Luke, Jalen and Vit ) to share the initiation load. There isn’t a backup PG worth playing that would sign in Atlanta to play 10 mins a night as the lead ballhandler. ATL will take a by committee approach that will prove to be more effective than centralizing the backup reps into a Tyus Jones-esque player. This approach will make the Hawks a more versatile offense, ensuring their offense is more resilient in the April and May.
5. How will Atlanta balance maximizing KP and Trae on offense?
The Hawks made a multitude of shrewd moves to build the first roster in the Trae era with lineup and positional versatility + size. During media day, Trae spoke about his excitement to play with the first player in his career that commands doubles with regularity. Porzingis is a T3 post scorer in the last 3 years, averaging 1.23 PPP, with the 3 free-throw rate on post-ups since 2014.
The Hawks tried to bring in additional creation after the 2022 Heat series exposed how overly reliant the Hawks were on Trae, but poor fit evaluation cost them 2 years of competitive basketball. 2025 Trae was asked to create 61.5% of his team’s Iso volume (4th highest 1st option share in the league) while also crafting shots for his most limited roster yet, leading the NBA in RAPM teammate shot quality influence and pushing the Hawks to the best shot quality in the NBA.
That shot creation load plus some achilles tendinitis led Trae to have his worst iso season by far (19th% in scoring efficiency), though he was able to maintain respectable efficiency elsewhere (-1.3 rTS%, 63rd%). His efficiency should rise this season, as Kristaps will be able to shoulder a creation load we’ve yet to see from a Trae teammate. For 8 seasons, Trae has been relied upon as the Hawks lead playmaker, shot creator and FT drawer, as Kristaps will be the first non-Trae Hawk to rank in Top 50 in FTA/g since 2019 John Collins — with a large portion of those FTA being self-created.
The Hawks now have 48 minutes of plus playmaking in their frontcourt, a stark contrast from the worst passing frontcourt in the NBA (2023 Hawks starting frontcourt averaged a league worst 5.1 assists per game).
Using Jalen as a handler and KP as a facilitator should boost Trae’s efficiency by empowering him off the ball. In the halfcourt, KP needs to be ATL’s primary late clock option, finding him when sets break down to go to work from the elbow or in the post. Atlanta should run a ton of actions with double screeners, using Spain/Double Drag to take advantage of KP’s unique pick & pop ability.
The Hawks will play extremely up-tempo, leveraging Trae’s passing ability plus Jalen’s grab & go ability in transition to set up KP for trail 3s or early seals against cross-matches. They also need to be comfortable entering the ball to the bigs at the top of the key to initiate delay action, flowing into handoffs to kickstart possessions
ATL should find themselves a T10 offense for the first time in 3 years if they embrace playing through their bigs, as they’ve added the shotmakers to capitalize on the looks Trae and Snyder’s system generated last year.
Record Prediction
Total Wins Over/Under: 46.5 via BetMGM
Floor: 35–47 (-5 wins)
In addition to the obvious injury concerns, this Hawks team still has a number of open questions that could seriously bottleneck their performance this season. The roster is still light on self-creation even with the KP addition and they have severe vulnerabilities against physical teams due to lack of size on the wing and positional strength across the roster.
Ceiling: 51-31 (+11 wins)
On paper, this is the most complete Hawks team in the Trae Young era, brimming with both offensive and defensive versatility. They have 48 mins of ball pressure from Dyson & NAW, 48 mins of strong frontcourt play from Jalen/KP/Onyeka and 48 mins of strong shooting from Trae/Luke/NAW and potentially Risacher.
Let me know if you agree with my predictions! What are your expectations for the Hawks this season?
Overall Grade: A
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About the author
I’m a lifelong basketball enthusiast who blends film study and advanced analytics in my independent coverage of basketball and the NBA Draft across Tiktok, Twitter, Youtube, Substack and Instagram. I’ve also covered the Hawks for ~2 years as an accredited digital journalist for Afro News, and I am a member of the Atlanta Hawks’ Creators Collective.
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