Three-Point Play: Rotation Changes & Gobert's Impact

Though the Hawks played with significantly greater intensity and focus on Thursday than they did in New York on Tuesday, Atlanta still fell short, 111-106, to the Utah Jazz. The loss extended the team’s losing streak to six games, and the Hawks (6-23) have now lost 20 of their last 23.

Here’s what stood out from the loss:

Vince Carter and Damian Jones played zero minutes

When asked the motivation for shaking up his starting lineup ahead of Thursday’s game, Lloyd Pierce responded succinctly: “Six and twenty-two.”

The head coach made drastic changes to his rotation following the Hawks’ lifeless showing in New York, starting Trae Young, Kevin Huerter, Cam Reddish, De’Andre Hunter, and Bruno Fernando to give Atlanta a super-small – and extraordinarily young – lineup that would spark the team’s energy while giving young players key developmental reps. Pierce played a 10-man rotation that did not include Damian Jones, who had started the previous 19 games, or Vince Carter, who had become a staple in Atlanta’s second unit since John Collins’ suspension.

Instead, Fernando, Jabari Parker, and Alex Len filled the center minutes while DeAndre’ Bembry and Evan Turner – lately outcasts in the rotation – played 20 and eight minutes, respectively, off the bench. (Had Carter played on Thursday, he would have passed John Stockton for fourth all-time in games played against Stockton’s former team.) It’s hard for a coach to fairly distribute minutes among eight players, let alone ten or twelve. Now that the Hawks are mostly healthy, Pierce has been forced to make difficult decisions about who to keep and who to cut from the mix.

“I keep saying it’s hard to play more than 10,” Pierce said. “When you bring Bruno up that knocks out one of your bigs, and that was Damian. And I wanted to give E.T. [Evan Turner] a chance because of the small-ball and being able to keep four traditional smalls on the floor, and I thought E.T. would have given us more of a chance to defend their guys than Vince. And so that was the numbers game.”

Pierce had to adjust his initial gameplan when De’Andre Hunter picked up two fouls in the game’s first 52 seconds, which gave Bembry early entry into the contest. The Hawks effectively played four guards and a center for most of the first quarter and closed the game with Parker playing center. The forward finished with 23 points, nine rebounds, five assists – was crucial in sparking Atlanta’s offense alive, particularly when Rudy Gobert was off the floor.

There are a few likely reasons for suddenly starting Fernando and Reddish, chief among them the ability to match up with opponents, like the Jazz, who play four wings around a hulking center. Brooklyn, who the Hawks will play on Saturday, takes a similar approach, and Pierce said that the idea of starting small has been in his mind since Atlanta hosted the Nets earlier this month. Hunter and Allen Crabbe, however, were unavailable in that game, which forced the Hawks to play bigger than they would have liked.

“That was predicated by the Brooklyn game more than anything, and this was just an opportunity to do so headed into the next Brooklyn game,” Pierce said before Thursday’s game. “They had De’Andre Jordan and Jarrett Allen at their five, and everyone else is pretty much one-through-four switchable. And I just felt like we missed an opportunity with De’Andre being out and Allen being out, we were forced to have Jabari on the floor chasing those guys around and Vince on the floor chasing those guys around. And I just knew, we have Brooklyn on Saturday, we’re going to do it then regardless.”

Pierce could also have been trying to conjure some life in his team after an embarrassing effort against the Knicks. NBA players are creatures of habit; perhaps by having their usual rhythm disrupted, the Hawks would play with a greater sense of urgency. Whether for that reason or not, Pierce got the desired result. “I thought our guys competed,” he said. “I thought our guys took the gameplan and played with a lot of energy tonight and competed from start to finish.”

Starting two rookies in place of a reclamation project and a journeyman on a one-year contract also aligns more closely with the Hawks’ long-term goals. If Atlanta is going to struggle, it may as well do so by developing players who might actually be important parts of its future. A lineup featuring five players with less than three years of NBA experience will naturally have its deficiencies. But the primary goal of this season should be investing in those young players and allowing them to grow. All the better if they allow Atlanta to better match up with an opponent as formidable as Utah.

Rudy Gobert dominated inside

Thursday’s game revolved around Rudy Gobert, whose 20 points, 13 rebounds, and three blocks don’t do justice his interior dominance. From the start, he controlled the rim on both ends of the floor, which ultimately swung the game in Utah’s favor. The Frenchman’s three blocked shots were impressive on their own; holding Atlanta to under 50 percent shooting at the rim was more remarkable still. But it’s the shots the Hawks didn’t even attempt that illustrated what kind of impact Gobert can have on defense.

Atlanta took only 34 percent of its shots at the rim – compared to a 38 percent mark for the season. That disparity might seem insignificant, but a few extra scoring opportunities from the most profitable area of the floor can swing entire games. Gobert turned away all comers at the basket. Every time Atlanta attacked him, he proved equal to the challenge. When drivers saw him lurking around the corner, they invariably thought better of shooting or hoisted up hopeless attempts:

“He’s one of the best shot-blockers in the league, if not the best shot-blocker,” said Trae Young, who shot just 3-of-9 on floaters against the 7-foot-1 Gobert’s length. “He affects a lot of shots every game he’s in. That’s something he does on a regular basis.” Gobert even held his own on the perimeter after he was matched up with Young in transition:

Atlanta’s shot quality improved significantly with Gobert off the floor, and the Hawks made most of their progress when the he rested. On the other end, Gobert was just as imposing. He took 19 free throws – matching the entire Hawks team – as a result of the constant pressure he put on the rim in the pick-and-roll. Atlanta’s centers weren’t nimble enough to contain both the ball and the diving Gobert:

It isn’t just his physical tools that make Gobert such a force inside, it’s the frantic, relentless effort with which he plays. His motor runs higher than nearly any big man in the league, which allows him to extract maximum value from his ungodly length and powerful vertical explosion. He is a defense unto himself, and an ever-present source of strength for the Utah Jazz. “That’s the two-time Defensive Player of the Year,” Mitchell said. “That’s what he does.”

How will Atlanta’s rotation change when John Collins returns?

The absence of Atlanta’s second-best player has been a massive elephant in a reportedly tense locker room the last 24 games. If all goes according to plan, Collins will make his return on Monday in Cleveland without any restrictions, giving the Hawks some (potential) emotional relief and, more importantly, a vital piece on the court. The team does not expect Collins to singlehandedly fix its problems, but he offers a unique combination of skills that unlocks possibilities no other Hawk can. At times, Parker has approximated Collins’ downhill scoring ability and Jones his vertical threat at the rim, but neither does both. Pierce has often been able to put a capable scorer or defender at power forward, but with Collins he doesn’t have to choose between the two.

Parker played 14 minutes at center on Thursday night, and while that made Atlanta’s offense more dynamic, it compromised the defense significantly. Parker is one of the least effective defenders among NBA rotation players, a problem that has come to the fore as he’s played more minutes with and against starters. But masking those weaknesses with a traditional center like Fernando or Alex Len weighs down the offense without much defensive tradeoff. While the presumed plan when Collins returned was to slot him at power forward and bring Parker off the bench, Thursday may have foreshadowed Pierce playing Collins at center – something he has been reluctant to do the last two years.

“As we’re approaching John returning in a couple days, we still want to look at a few things leading into that,” Pierce said. “Not that he’s going to solve all of the issues, but if we can figure out a couple lineups, a couple combinations, a couple adjustments, and then we’ve got to make a necessary change with him coming back anyways, we just want to figure who works well together and what dynamics work well together and what dynamics don’t.”

Collins is no Gobert, but he had been playing the most engaged defense of his career prior to his suspension. Given how lost Fernando has looked at times, Atlanta might even be better off defensively with Collins at center. The offensive benefit of playing him with four perimeter players is clear: Atlanta can maximize its spacing around a terrorizing lob threat and give Young more room to breathe in the process. Collins’ shooting will regress from the blazing 47 percent he shot in his first five games, but he ought to be, at the very least, a reliable floor spacer.

His return will keep at least one of Jones, Fernando, Turner, Carter, and Bembry out of the rotation. Pierce could toggle between options depending on a given night’s matchup, but he will inevitably have uncomfortable decisions to make. There are no perfect solutions to Atlanta’s defensive issues. At the very least, Pierce will likely experiment with using Collins at center, but the Hawks may be best served to lean into their youth and athleticism, and make it a feature.