I’ve got tickets to see them against Orlando on Wednesday. I hope this team tonight isn’t the one that shows up.
When we go full bench unit, it should be a considered a fire able offense. At least put Trae/Huerter or Snell in so you have spacing And the Gallo/JC front courts couldn’t stop anyone ITT from getting to the basket
Time to start talking about the Lottery. If we lucked into a top four pick, there are four players that would contribute immediately. I hate saying that now, but we are just dog$hit without Hunter. Our only saving grace is that the rest of the East sucks outside the top three. Our current bench is worse than last season’s which is really saying something. Gallo’s only really contribution outside of the Boston game is to get jump shots over defenders at the end of the shot clock. That has value but his defense eats all that value up. Hopefully Bogdan is actually healthy by the start of next week because he needs to be the only player that backs up Trae at PG.
Lloyd was a really good dude. He was also good at developing players. That was cancelled out by him being a horrible end of game tactician. Don’t know if McMillan is the long term answer but I think we will be better the rest of the year. I think Atlanta will be a very desirable job next season if Nate doesn’t show a little extra.
I’d rather have someone who comes from a tree that has a Fn clue on offense. Rotations were and are a nightmare. The Gallo/JC front courts were nightmarish end of game tactics were disastrous Cam hasn’t developed at all. How much is on him and how much on Lloyd?
That would be extremely stupid of McMillan. He’s just angling for higher pay for the rest of the season. This is an up and coming team. He gets them to the playoffs after the play-in part, then he will likely get a long term deal. What team is he going to get to coach next year that would be a better situation?
I wonder how the formula wouldve looked if you had Nate as hc and LP as his top assistant Still think Travis' offseason did not help the situation. Plenty of good coaches out there. Franchise might as well wait till the summer.
I was sorta underwhelmed with the Athletic's list but Id be OK with Kenny Atkinson or Darvin Ham given how good they were as assistants here. What a staff when you think about Quinn Snyder there too. Really never should have allowed Bud to leave.
there was a dysfunction moment up in Brooklyn early in 2021 right? Like Trae quit towards the end of the game. It was on a road trip somewhere in the northeast. Remember Pierce when he was on Lowe's pod saying he was out in LA for vacation. Wonder if thats when he was meeting with Trae. Some of the ATL media wants to claim LP was not given a fair shake and place the blame of Trae's inconsistency and errors on the player, not the coach. But (1) a good coach avoids that and coaches that out (2) Trae's issues werent the only thing here. 11 blown 4th Quarter leads. Errors on both ends of court. Bad decisions, from the bench, that directly led to losses. Sure he could have been given a longer leash, but we are reaching the event horizon for salvaging whatever is left of 2021.
Spoiler Seven months after the pandemic had brought the Atlanta Hawks’ season to an unwelcome end, it was time for a Southern California reunion to bring them all back together again. Coach Lloyd Pierce and all the Hawks returnees would meet for team-bonding time, with all sorts of activities planned that he hoped would aid their chemistry heading into a season they all knew would be pressure-packed. There was pick-up basketball against other NBA players, a boxing class where they squared off against one another and group dinners where topics included, among other things, the upcoming election. But the real headliner event took place when Pierce and Trae Young met privately to discuss their upcoming third year together. At that point, anyone and everyone around the Hawks organization was well aware the relationship between these two key figures was strained. If the Hawks were going to make the playoffs this season and contend, if they were going to avoid delays to accomplishing their shared goals, they would have to make this pairing work. Sources say they ended the trip on good terms and had a better understanding of how they each could make this work for the long term. But in the end — after old tensions between Pierce and Young resurfaced, other players grew frustrated with Pierce’s style and owner Tony Ressler’s desperate desire to make the playoffs added so much pressure to the situation — it was not to be. Those plans Pierce and Young had hatched in Southern California officially fell short Monday when the underperforming Hawks (14-20) announced that Pierce had been relieved of his duties. Hawks president Travis Schlenk, who had worked with Pierce a decade before while they were with the Golden State Warriors, made it clear in the team’s statement that the move was made with the hopes of righting their ship. “We have high expectations for our team on the court and we believe by making this change now that we can have a strong second half of the season,” Schlenk said. The 44-year-old coach, who was in the last guaranteed year of his contract and who had spoken so openly just last week in an interview with The Athletic about the likelihood that he would be let go, will be replaced by an interim coach in Nate McMillan who had been serving as Pierce’s lead assistant. And the primary reason for it all, sources say, is that several players — from Young on down — were eager to hear a new voice. As this season progressed, the goodwill that Pierce and Young had re-established would dissipate, and the friction between them would return. It became apparent that Young and Pierce were not going to be a match that was sustainable for long-term success. But Young was hardly alone here. Sources say player support beyond Young was dwindling at the end, with several sharing their desire for a change with management recently. Still, the difficult dynamic between Young and Pierce was an undeniable factor in Pierce’s downfall and a tone-setter of sorts for the group at large. Pierce took the tough love approach with Young from Day 1, opting to push him hard as a way of maximizing his celebrated talent. But Young, who had inspired so much hype during his time coming up in (and at) Oklahoma, often pushed back against Pierce’s style. John Collins could relate. Pierce made a public comment two seasons ago about not running plays for Collins, and it rubbed the Hawks big man the wrong way. Collins went to Pierce about his issue with the statement, but Pierce, sources say, turned around and called Collins’ approach selfish in wanting to have a more defined role on the team. Over time, the residue from these types of situations remained. Cam Reddish was among those, sources said, who also had an issue with Pierce’s coaching. Sources said Reddish felt like he was being “picked on” behind the scenes when it came to mistakes the second-year player made. There are a few players on the Hawks’ roster who feel like Reddish’s potential is higher than anyone on the roster but that Pierce’s input was stunting his development. The hope is Reddish, taken 10th overall by Atlanta in 2019, can soar with a new voice. At the least, though, there will be no more excuses for him to improve after his clashes with Pierce. It also couldn’t have helped that two of the players known to be disenfranchised with Pierce — Young and Reddish — were the ones acquired when Atlanta made the controversial trade with Dallas in exchange for Luka Doncic in June 2018. The lack of trust in Pierce, from numerous players, started in his first season. For The Athletic’sanonymous NBA player poll in April 2019, when one Hawks player was asked which coach in the NBA would you not want to play for, he responded with, “Are we allowed to say the one we play for?” The lack of faith in Pierce from the players quickly eroded last year, with several on the team feeling like they could not approach him without leaving the conversation feeling like they weren’t being heard. Because of that, players would turn to assistant coach Chris Jent in the hopes that he could be the one to relay any comments or concerns to Pierce on their behalf. There wasn’t a specific event that led to Pierce losing the locker room but rather a collection of small moments that built up since his first season in Atlanta and finally combusted in the team’s first season with expectations under him. “There’s no telling when he lost it,” one source close to the team said. “He didn’t have support from many people. It came down to him not being able to manage egos. That’s what did him in, especially these young guys. It’s tough.” Interestingly, away from the team, Pierce’s comments about Young’s game raised eyebrows around the league. During a league office Competition Committee call on Dec. 30, Pierce was among a couple of members who spoke out about the way certain players are able to draw fouls and, at times, bait officials into making foul calls. Multiple sources said he spoke about how he “hates” the shots Young takes at times and the fouls he’s able to draw on them. It was perceived as an interesting comment for several people on the call because Pierce’s star player has seemingly taken advantage of drawing fouls and getting to the foul line. But it was made in the broader picture of how players are drawing fouls by manipulating their bodies. As far as on-court decisions go, players routinely criticized Pierce’s in-game management strategy over the past three seasons. One of the most notable moments of last season came in a December 2019 game in Miami. The Hawks led by six in the final minute when Pierce substituted Young out for DeAndre’ Bembry for defensive purposes. After Miami cut Atlanta’s lead down to three, Pierce failed to call a timeout to reinsert Young on offense. Bembry ended up getting his shot blocked, the Heat tied the game and it eventually went into overtime where the Hawks lost. Just a few weeks after that Miami game, in Cleveland, Young was frustrated once again with a decision Pierce made in a late-game situation. Pierce had Young inbound the ball with the hope that he’d get it right back to put up a clean shot attempt at the end of the game. Instead, the Cavaliers denied him a good look, and the Hawks lost. After the game, Young was asked if he preferred being the inbounds passer, and he tersely responded with, “It’s not anybody else’s way, but the coach’s way.” Players routinely felt Pierce didn’t take accountability for mistakesthey viewed were his own. Last season as the team went through its final year of a complete rebuild, Pierce would frequently say the team lacked energy and effort, but it would be defiantly rebuffed by the team when asked about his claims afterward. This season was much of the same, as players felt like Pierce didn’t take any blame for the team blowing 11 games this season where they held a fourth-quarter lead. When some of the players approached Pierce a few weeks ago with the request to have more off-ball movement and free flowing in the offense in late-game situations instead of stagnation, they, once again, felt unheard. Over the past few weeks, players started to wonder if Pierce had resigned to the inevitability of his situation and was going to go out his way. As the same story played out in end-of-game situations, sources say Hawks owner Ressler grew incensed with his team losing winnable games in the same manner. The Hawks’ offseason that was widely seen as a success clearly added pressure to Pierce’s situation. In his fourth year as the head of the Hawks’ front office, Schlenk landed Rajon Rondo (two years, $15 million), Danilo Gallinari (three years, $61 million), Bogdan Bogdanovic (four years, $72 million), Kris Dunn (two years, $10 million) and Solomon Hill (one year, $2.17 million). In turn, there was rare hype around the Hawks again — especially when they started the season 4-1 and had the league’s second-best offense early on. But the harsh truth about Pierce’s dismissal is that he never truly had a chance to coach this group, as the injuries changed everything about the challenge that awaited them. Rondo has missed 16 games this season with knee, ankle and back injuries. When he has played, the Hawks have been 14.9 points worse with him on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass. Dunn has missed the entire season for the Hawks. He originally was diagnosed with right knee cartilage disruption, and as he worked his way back, Dunn had a setback and needed right ankle surgery to remove loose cartilage. Bogdanovic has missed 25 games with an avulsion fracture in his knee. He has been able to practice lately and should return soon. Gallinari missed 10 games due to an ankle sprain. Since coming back from the injury, he has not looked like himself and has been a consistent target for opposing teams to attack while he’s been on defense. First-round pick Onyeka Okongwu entered his rookie year with a stress fracture causing him to be behind from the outset. Yet amid all of that roster uncertainty, this part of the Hawks’ landscape hadn’t changed: Ressler is known to have made it abundantly clear that he expected meaningful growth from this group, and it appears no amount of unforeseen setbacks was about to change his view on that front. “As we said at the beginning of the season, our goal was to have progress this year and to move forward,” Schlenk said in a news conference discussing Pierce’s dismissal. “We just felt like it wasn’t happening as quickly as we wanted it to. These are not easy decisions. These are real-life decisions that affect multiple families, and they’re not easy. We felt like, for the organization, it was the best thing to do moving forward.” Anyone who had been close to the Hawks’ situation these past few seasons and saw the struggles of this campaign could sense this was coming, perhaps no one more than Pierce himself. Just last week, in an interview with The Athletic’s Jeff Schultz, he was uniquely candid in assessing his own situation. “Travis is going to fire me one day,” Pierce said. “And do you know what I’m going to say? The guy gave me a great opportunity in life. Do you think I’m going to be pissed? He’s damn near my best friend.” Those personal dynamics were on display at the end of their partnership, when Schlenk struck a somber tone in his Zoom call to discuss the decision with reporters. “I don’t know if you guys in your jobs ever have to let people go; I’ve been unfortunate (enough) to be in a position to have to fire people in the past, and I can tell you it’s an extremely difficult thing,” said Schlenk, who was hired in May 2017 after spending the previous 12 years with Golden State. “You’re not talking about one person. You’re talking about their family (as well). And in a situation where you’re talking about coaches, you’re talking about their assistant coaches, their video staff. A decision like this, I certainly don’t take lightly. I’ve been in the NBA for a long time and fortunately have been in a position to be able to do this, and these are decisions I don’t take lightly at all. These decisions affect families and multiple families.” Pierce leaves Atlanta with a 63-120 record, the 11th-worst record by winning percentage in NBA history with a minimum of 175 games coached. An argument can certainly be made that Pierce wasn’t given enough time to show what he can do as a head coach. His first season in Atlanta was meant to be all about playing the young players as much as possible, allowing them to play through their mistakes and hoping to end up with a high draft pick in the lottery. The Hawks entered last season still in rebuild mode, as the talent from his first season didn’t improve. Evan Turner was the team’s backup point guard entering the season, and they had a center rotation of Alex Len, Damian Jones and then-rookie Bruno Fernando. By the time the Hawks reached the unexpected end of their 2019-20 campaign, with a 20-47 record on March 11 that would stand for good after the NBA decided not to invite the Hawks (or seven other teams) to the Orlando bubble, sources say Pierce’s job security was already extremely tenuous, in large part, because of the locker room’s distrust in him. When Pierce publicly declared last March that the Hawks would be in the playoffs this season, it caught everyone inside the front office by surprise. Whenever Schlenk was asked about it on multiple occasions over the course of the next few months, he would always be sure to downplay Pierce’s guarantee. If not for a multitude of non-basketball factors, from the pandemic that had forced the premature end to their season to the emergence of the social justice movement in which Pierce was so involved, sources with knowledge of the Hawks’ plans say he may have been fired at that point. But Pierce had become a vocal leader on the social justice front during a time when the spotlight had turned in that meaningful direction, and it’s clear the bigger-than-basketball element won out when it came to the Hawks’ calculus. Pierce had been lauded for his role on the Coaches Association’s committee on racial justice and reform, with the combination of his voice and the Atlanta backdrop proving powerful. From Ressler on down, there was an understanding that not only did the season being cut short take valuable time away from Pierce and his team, but his work off the court deserved to be part of the equation too. The Hawks have taken a conscious effort in ingratiating themselves within the fabric of the community in trying to create long-lasting change, and Pierce was at the heart of it. Pierce was the first coach in the league to get his team to use its arena as a polling place, and State Farm Arena turned into the largest polling location in the state of Georgia’s history. According to a Hawks team source, 40,000 people voted at the arena for the November election. What’s more, it mattered a great deal that Young’s father, Ray, had even supported Pierce publicly on social media by lauding the work he had done in the social justice space. “Talking to my peers, seeing their leadership off court has been inspiring, (including) Lloyd’s leadership with the NBA coaches committee,” Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder said in July. Pierce’s reputation among his peers was evident after he was fired, with San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, Dallas’ Rick Carlisle, Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers and New Orleans’ Stan Van Gundy among those voicing their support. Still, the ground beneath him entering this season had been extremely shaky. The fact that the Hawks had not picked up his team option for the 2021-22 season was evidence enough that he was in trouble. In an interview with The Athleticbefore the start of the season, when Ressler was asked what his confidence level was in Pierce and Schlenk as a duo, the team’s owner said he needed to see more out of them before being sure they were the ones who would lead the team to a title one day. “All I can say is I think Travis and Lloyd are a superb team so far, but please understand let’s win a bit,” Ressler said. “We really do believe that last year’s season was difficult for so many reasons, including the fact that it stopped early just when we started playing good basketball. Please hear me, 20-47 in a 67-game season is not something to write home about. I think we do have a good roster. We’ve done some good things, not just on the court but in coaching and in our front office. “I feel great about where we are starting the season. I don’t get into the press stuff too much because I would rather let the players, coaches and GM talk about what we’re doing from a basketball perspective because they should know more and are closer to it, but I look forward to talking to you guys whether it’s at the midseason point or end of season. We should be so much better, and it’s going to be painfully obvious. We’ll see.” Thirty-four games into the season, the improvement hadn’t come. They are currently 11th in the Eastern Conference — unacceptable by the organization’s standards considering only the top 10 teams will take part in the league’s new play-in tournament. As Schlenk pointed out in his news conference, there’s plenty of time to move up in the East standings as well (they’re just 3.5 games back of the fourth seed). “We have a ton of basketball to play, and we’re still right there,” Schlenk said. “It’s not like we’re 10 games out of the playoffs or anything like that. We’re a couple of games out, so if you have one good week, you’re right back into it.” There’s optimism that a new voice will make all the difference, that this difficult decision to dismiss Pierce will ultimately prove to be worth it. McMillan is a proven commodity, having been a head coach for a combined 16 seasons in Seattle, Portland and Indiana (661-588; nine playoff appearances; and a 17-36 postseason mark). And last but certainly not least, Young is known to be fond of McMillan’s style. “My focus is really on the Hawks and trying to assist Coach on what he’s trying to do here and after the season, we’ll see what happens,” McMillan, who went 2-1 while serving as acting head coach while Pierce was away to attend the birth of his second child, said on Feb. 16. “I signed on knowing what I would be coming in to and knowing what I needed to do as far as joining Coach Pierce’s staff as an assistant. This is the role I wanted. We’re going to try to turn this thing around.” Now he’ll try turning it around as the man in charge and as the voice the Hawks hope can lead them into the playoffs. — The Athletic’s Shams Charania also contributed to the reporting for this story.
He was my favorite player in the draft for the Hawks but obviously that was a little too bullish. Still he just needs to move into a ~18 minute a game backup next season. JC needs to stay at PF only since Gallo is looking like a 15 minute change up at best going forward.
Agree with all this. in 4th quarters, Nate needs to pair OO with JC and Clint with Gallo. when JC and Gallo are paired together, it’s catastrophic at the rim and on the glass.