ESPN's BPI Projects Where The Hawks Will Land In The Eastern Conference Standings

Where should the Hawks land in the standings this season?

Oct 16, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Atlanta Hawks point guard Trae Young (11) dribbles against Houston Rockets guard Aaron Holiday (0) during the first half at State Farm Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

If you are an Atlanta Hawks fan, hearing so much positive talk about your team might make you nervous.

The Hawks are not usually the team that is lauded for their offseason work, but you won't find many around the league that don't think Atlanta hit a home run this summer.

Things got started with the big three-team trade that landed the Hawks Kristaps Porzingis, and they continued into the actual free agent period. Atlanta signed arguably the top free agent on the market when they inked former Timberwolves guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker to a four-year $62 million deal, and then free agent sharpshooter Luke Kennard signed a one-year 11$ million deal.

Most analysts are projecting the Hawks to be around 3rd or 4th in the Eastern Conference and according to ESPN's BPI, that is exactly where they will end up.

BPI projection

Oct 16, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Atlanta Hawks center Kristaps Porzingis (8) goes to the basket between Houston Rockets forward Jeff Green (32) and guard Reed Sheppard (15) during the first half at State Farm Arena. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

ESPN's Basketball Power Index gave its projection for the Eastern Conference and have the Hawks at No. 4, behind Cleveland, New York, and Orlando.

"The Hawks have a 24% chance at a top-two seed in the East. That's like pulling out a win when entering the fourth quarter down five or six points, so not at all impossible. They have an 85% chance at landing in the top six.

Atlanta was 18th in defense last year. The team hasn't sniffed the top half of the defensive rankings since before COVID. That happens to correspond to how long Trae Young has been in Atlanta.

But with 50 or 60 games of Kristaps Porzingis and a full season of Nickeil Alexander-Walker, BPI projects the Hawks to be a top-10 defense (just barely)."

Not all projections are loving the Hawks this season.

While most projections place the Hawks amongst the top four teams in the Eastern Conference, ESPN's Kevin Pelton and his projection model are giving the Hawks 44 wins and projecting them to finish 7th in the East, behind Cleveland, Orlando, New York, Indiana, Boston, and Milwaukee:

"The hype might be getting a little heavy for the Hawks, whose offseason was undoubtedly positive but perhaps not transformative in the short term. I'm higher than the model on Atlanta's chances of avoiding the play-in, but I would still be surprised if they finish in the East's top four."

Here is how Pelton calculates his projections:

"Based on the scoring of projections at the APBRmetrics forum, my recalibrated forecast had the second-lowest root mean squared error, a method that heavily penalizes bad misses. It also had the strongest correlation to actual wins and losses.

To project teams, I start with player ratings based on a combination of my SCHOENE stats-based projections and luck-adjusted regularized adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) provided by Krishna Narsu that covers the past three seasons. For each team, I project games played based on those missed to injury over the past three years and current absences then subjectively guess at the distribution of playing time.

The result is an expected wins total given average health, which is comparable to teams' over/under season win totals at ESPN BET. In addition to ranking each conference's teams 1 to 15, I've also tried to explain why my projections are higher or lower than those totals."

I would be pretty surprised if the Hawks finished behind the Pacers and the Celtics in the standings, if they manage to stay healthy, which is probably the biggest question mark surrounding the Hawks considering that Kristaps Porzingis and Jalen Johnson have struggled to stay healthy.

The Pacers are of course going to be missing Tyrese Haliburton this season, but losing Myles Turner is also going to be a problem for them. Rick Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the league and I suspect this team is going to overachieve and not fall off a cliff, but finishing fourth in the Eastern Conference seems a bit much.

The same goes for the Celtics. Jaylen Brown and Derrick White are tremendous players, as is Payton Pritchard, but the frontcourt is going to give them problems in a number of games this season. This is a well coached team and I don't think they are suddenly going to fall off of a cliff, but I also don't think they are going to be one of the top five teams in the conference either.

Milwaukee is another team that I would not project to be better than Atlanta. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player in the Eastern Conference, but the rest of that team leaves a lot to be desired. If they get off to a poor enough start, will the trade speculation start with Antetokounmpo?

The Hawks are not without their flaws, but I like their odds to be better than either the Pacers, Celtics, or Bucks this season.