February 24, 2015
At the time of this writing, the Atlanta Hawks lead the NBA Eastern Conference standings with a 44-12 record. To put these Hawks into context: they are sitting on a .786 winning percentage with two-thirds of the season gone. That’s on pace for the 20th most winningest season in NBA history.
That’s a better record than Larry Bird’s first Boston Celtics championship season in ’81. Or the dominant ’89 champion Detroit Pistons. Or the ’98 championship Chicago Bulls, led by some guy named Michael Jordan. Or dozens of other championship teams in NBA history.
The Atlanta Hawks are baffling because a team of overlooked consolation prizes almost never come together to challenge for NBA titles. They have zero elite players and have remained largely unchanged for two seasons. Suddenly, they’re winning more games than Larry Bird.
You’d have to go back to the 2004 Detroit Pistons to find a comparable team of overachievers that came out of nowhere to dominate. That Pistons team further shocked the world by winning the NBA Championship, but that is a historical anomaly.
In the past 30 years, only the 2004 Detroit Pistons can be described as a complete underdog champion. Sure, a few other teams in that period have punched above their weight to claim a title. But these teams had at least a shot at winning. Nobody gave the ’04 Pistons the slightest chance in hell to win it all.
Teams without an elite great player do not win NBA titles. But the 2004 Detroit Pistons somehow managed to win despite not having one. The previous championship squad without an elite superstar was the 1979 Seattle Supersonics.
Whoever bet on that Pistons team to win must have made an obscene amount of money and commanded twice as much in bragging rights. This year’s Atlanta Hawks is the first team to come along since then that reminds us of those Pistons, in terms of how unlikely their championship bid seems regardless of what the standings say.
Can the Atlanta Hawks do the same and shock the world? Let’s have a look at the case for and against Atlanta as we compare them to the 2004 Detroit Pistons.
The Case for Atlanta:
The very nature of this NBA season itself is Atlanta’s best case. We are enjoying a historically open season where a normally predictable landscape has been made highly unpredictable. Usually, an NBA season features two or maybe three elite contenders and one of them invariably wins. Teams ranked 4-10 almost never win.
This year, we have no truly elite teams. Instead, we have an incredibly deep field of 8-10 credible contenders. This almost never happens in the NBA and it is a partial explanation for Atlanta’s excellent season thus far. There are so many teams in turmoil or development (especially in the East) that teams like Atlanta can exploit them with its stability and unselfishness.
Those ’04 Pistons were relentlessly unselfish, and it allowed them to play a slow-down brand of suffocating basketball with players that knew exactly what their roles were. They were the epitome of “stronger than the sum of its parts.”
Atlanta has that same unselfishness and stability. Their head coach, Mike Budenholzer, spent 18 years as an assistant for legendary Spurs coach, Gregg Popovich, before landing in Atlanta last year. That’s a PHD in winning and unselfish basketball, taught by one of the five greatest coaches in NBA history. Budenholzer learned well from Popovich, and the Hawks (nicknamed “Spurs East” in some media circles) now exhibit the same unselfish team-first principles that helped to make the Spurs a dynasty.
In a Conference where powerhouses such as Cleveland and Chicago are still finalizing their team structure, Atlanta is already the finished product. Great, team basketball can hide many shortcomings, and this Atlanta team learned from the best.
The Case Against Atlanta:
This is going to be a far longer list than the case for the Hawks winning, but that’s the whole point! Nobody saw the ’04 Pistons coming, even though their “cons” list must have rivalled the one I’m about to write for the Hawks.
First of all, we have to identify a few simple facts: the 2004 Pistons were coached by the all-time great Larry Brown, while the promising Budenholzer is still finding his way.
Also, the 2004 Detroit Pistons were a historically dominant defensive team. They were an absolute monster to score against. Detroit basically sucked the life out of their opponents with a defense that was hard to watch even for purist basketball nerds.
But it worked! Larry Brown took his team’s one elite skill and turned it into an all-time defensive brick wall. They may have lacked the firepower, but they rode a legendary lockdown defense all the way to the top.
Atlanta has a very good defense, currently ranked third in the league in points-per-game allowed and opponent’s field goal percentage. However, they are not the ’04 Pistons defensively, mainly because, well, nobody is.
That Detroit front line was an all-time nightmare to play against. Rasheed Wallace was one of the finest post defenders around. Tayshaun Prince was long, fast and a relentless lockdown defender who could guard four positions at an elite level. And big Ben Wallace, a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, was a once-a-generation defensive force.
With all due respect to Al Horford, Paul Millsap and whoever is starting next to them, Atlanta is not in the same league as 2004 Detroit.
You can’t win a title without a good-to-great defense, which Atlanta has. But it’s not an all-time dominant defense, which means they won’t ride it all the way to a title like Detroit did. Even those Pistons would secretly admit they were lucky to win it all, because they, like the Hawks, were limited by their lack of an elite superstar.
You need one of those to win in the NBA, and the Hawks do not have anything resembling a star closer. In the tensest moments of playoff basketball, sometimes you just cannot score against iron-clad defenses regardless of how good your team is playing. That’s when you need a dominant player who can create opportunities from nothing.
Atlanta doesn’t have that closer. They will meet playoff defenses and will struggle to score against them in key possessions. The best player matters in a playoff series, and these Hawks might not have a single series in which they have the best player on their side.
Finally, let’s look at the odds picture to see if that makes a punt worthwhile.
Currently in late February, a futures bet for an Atlanta Hawks championship stands at a lukewarm 7-1, which means a $100 bet would get you $700. This makes them the fourth favourites to win it all, and only Golden State (4-1), Cleveland (4-1) and defending champion San Antonio (6-1) are ranked above them. For a team as unlikely to win as Atlanta, 7-1 odds are not exactly enticing.
In context, current Western powers such as the OKC Thunder (10-1), Memphis Grizzlies (12-1), Houston Rockets (17-1) and the insanely underrated Portland Trailblazers (30-1!!!) all have far more enticing payouts (and arguably, better teams).
Atlanta is rated this highly because they play in the terrible East where only two other teams are contenders (Cavs and Bulls). The Eastern path to the Finals is like a beach holiday compared to the bloodbath we can expect in the West, where all eight playoff teams have a shot at winning.
So, sure, Atlanta has a better chance at getting to the Finals than the Western teams mentioned above, but guess what? Even if they get there, they still have to actually play one of those teams. That’s when Hawks supporters become quiet again.
I’d have a punt on Atlanta at a minimum of 12-1 odds, but at 7-1 it doesn’t look good at all. Portland, at a ridiculously mouthwatering 30-1 odds, is arguably a better team than Atlanta. The Blazers are the team I’d bet on purely for the ludicrously generous payout.
But Atlanta at 7-1 odds just doesn’t do enough to make me forget how flawed they are as a contender. They are tearing up the regular season but the playoffs are a different animal. At 7-1 odds, it’s not worth betting on Atlanta and what may well be an unproven playoff team who overachieved at the wrong time in the NBA season.
