CJ Williams of Roswell | What the Atlanta Hawks Got Right About Rebuilding
CJ Williams of Roswell
The Atlanta Hawks spent most of the 2010s as a team that was hard to love. Good enough to make the playoffs, not good enough to do anything when they got there. Then Trae Young arrived, made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021, and gave Atlanta basketball fans something they had not had in a long time: a reason to watch every night.
Not always a reason to be confident. A reason to watch.
Cayden Williams of Roswell has been following the Hawks through the whole Trae Young era. He will tell you the team is the most interesting version of the franchise he has seen. That is a separate question from whether they are the best version.
What Trae Young actually does
Young runs an offense that is unlike most of what you see in the NBA. The stepback three gets the attention. The pass is what makes the offense work. He reads the floor at a speed that creates decisions for defenders they do not want to make, and when those decisions resolve in the wrong direction for the defense, someone on the Hawks gets a clean look.
Williams watches the way Young distributes the ball and thinks it is genuinely fun basketball. The problem is that fun basketball and winning basketball are not always the same game. The Hawks have been the more fun team in several playoff series they did not win.
The defensive side that has cost them
The Hawks under Young have been better offensively than defensively in most seasons. Williams is honest about it. You cannot build around a guard who is below average on that end and expect to beat the best teams in a playoff series where the game gets physical and the scoring comes harder.
The 2021 conference finals run was the exception that illustrated the rule. That team had role players who could guard. When those pieces left or declined, the defensive gap reopened. The identity of the team has been shaped by that gap ever since.
The current roster is more interesting than the record suggests
The Hawks have changed the supporting cast around Young enough that the team looks different from the versions that kept losing in the second round. There are defenders on the floor now. There are shooters who do not need to create their own shots.
Whether those pieces stay healthy long enough to see what the team looks like at full strength is the question every year. Williams watches every game and still cannot tell you what the ceiling is. He reads that as an argument for paying attention, not an argument against them.
What Atlanta basketball actually needs from this team
The 2021 conference finals run changed the relationship between the Hawks and the city. The building was alive in a way it had not been in years. Atlanta showed up. That energy does not come back from a good regular season record.
It comes back from a deep playoff run. CJ Williams of Roswell will tell you the ingredients for another one exist on the current roster. Whether they come together is the open question. The city is ready to respond when they do.