Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I still can’t believe Bill Belichick is actually going to North Carolina.
In today’s SI:AM:
🏆 NBA Cup semis set
🍃 A week on the grounds crew
🎓 UNC hires Belichick
Two wins to go
This season looked like it would be a rebuilding year for the Atlanta Hawks. After finishing in 10th in the Eastern Conference at 36–46 and missing the playoffs for the first time in four years, Atlanta decided the partnership of Trae Young and Dejounte Murray wasn’t working and traded the former All-Star Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans.
As expected, the Hawks got off to a mediocre start, going 7–11 over the first month of the season. But since then, they have been on fire. Atlanta has won seven of its last eight games to bring its record to 14–12. That’s good for seventh place in the East—not terribly impressive, but certainly better than the team was expected to be this season.
The hot streak couldn’t have come at a better time. With a 108–100 win over the New York Knicks on Wednesday night, the Hawks advanced to the semifinals of the NBA Cup tournament in Las Vegas. They will face the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday for a chance to play in next Tuesday’s championship game against either the Oklahoma City Thunder or Houston Rockets.
Of the four teams remaining, the Hawks are certainly the least likely to win. OKC and Houston are first and second in the West, respectively, and the Bucks are always a threat as long as Giannis Antetokounmpo is healthy. But at the same time, it wouldn’t be an enormous shock if Atlanta picked up two more wins to lift the trophy.
The Hawks have been excellent over their past eight games. That stretch includes back-to-back wins over the NBA-best Cleveland Cavaliers—two of the four defeats Cleveland has suffered all season—a 15-point win over the Bucks in Milwaukee and Wednesday’s win against the Knicks at the Garden. The lone blemish is a 30-point blowout loss to the Denver Nuggets on Sunday.
It should come as no surprise that Young is leading the way for the Hawks during this hot streak. But what is a bit of a surprise is that he’s doing it with his passing rather than scoring. Young has been one of the most explosive scorers in the league since he debuted in 2018, known for chucking the kind of audacious three-point attempts typically reserved for Stephen Curry. He’s ranked in the top 15 in the NBA in scoring four times. But he’s also an elite distributor, ranking in the top five in assists per game in each of his first five seasons. (He would have ranked second in the league last season if he had met the minimum games played requirement to qualify for leaderboards.)
This season, Young has taken his passing to another level. He’s averaging 12.2 assists per game, the best in the league and significantly more than his previous career high of 10.8. He has 19 games this season with at least 10 assists, seven more than any other player in the league (LeBron James has 12). He’s also had multiple 20-assist games—22 assists against the Cavs on Nov. 27 and 20 against the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 6. During the Hawks’ current eight-game hot streak, he has 101 assists. No other player in the league has more than 60 over that span.
Young has less pressure on himself to score in bunches because the Hawks have a couple of younger players who have stepped up offensively. The most noteworthy is Jalen Johnson, who’s proving that the Hawks made the right decision when they signed him to a five-year, $150 million extension before this season. The 2021 first-round pick is second on the team behind Young with 19.8 points per game and is also averaging a team-high 10.1 rebounds per game. De’Andre Hunter is also excelling in a new role coming off the bench and averaging a career-best 19.6 points per game while posting one of the best three-point shooting percentages in the league.
The NBA Cup is still a new competition, and it’s unclear how much stock teams and fans put in winning the trophy. But regardless of the tournament’s prestige (or lack there of), winning the Cup would be huge for the Hawks. They’re still highly unlikely to make a deep playoff run this season, but earning some kind of hardware would paint the season in an entirely different light. Even making it as far as they have in the competition is a big deal, since it gives a young Hawks team valuable experience playing in meaningful games. The Hawks might be a couple years away from contention in the East, but they’re already just two wins away from a trophy.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Liam McKeone has more on the exciting NBA Cup quarterfinal games.
- Today’s Digital Cover is Mitch Goldich’s entertaining chronicle of his week spent working on the grounds crew for the Vikings.
- In jumping to college football, Bill Belichick has a chance to define his coaching legacy on his own terms, Albert Breer writes.
- At the same time, Conor Orr writes, it shows that Belichick and the NFL were no longer compatible with each other.
- Bryan Fischer looked at the Belichick hire from the perspective of what it means about the increasing professionalization of college sports.
- North Carolina’s decision to hire Belichick may seem like a weird one, but Pat Forde believes that recent changes to college sports make the potential upside too great to pass up for the Tar Heels.
- Forde also wrote about why the Heisman Trophy race between Travis Hunter and Ashton Jeanty might be the most fascinating in the history of the award.
- Kevin Sweeney has a detailed look at how Overtime Elite fundamentally altered the basketball landscape.
- Patrick Andres examined CC Sabathia’s Hall of Fame case and why he may end a long drought for pitchers earning a spot in Cooperstown.
The top five…
… things I saw yesterday:
5. Mika Zibanejad’s 300th career goal.
4. This strong dunk by Jalen Green.
3. Trae Young’s celebration at midcourt after beating the Knicks.
2. Alperen Sengun’s mind-bending assist.
1. Catarina Macario’s ridiculous footwork on her goal for Chelsea in the Champions League.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Trae Young’s New Role Has Hawks Getting Hot at the Right Time.
