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Ken Sugiura: Solving Young-Murray conundrum hardly Hawks' only offseason challenge

Ken Sugiura, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on

Published in Basketball

ATLANTA — It came time Friday for the Hawks to recount their versions of the 2023-24 season. When it was Clint Capela’s turn at the end-of-season news conference at the team’s training complex, his comments were unsparing.

In the perspective of the veteran center, selfishness and a lack of commitment undid a team that aimed to build on its 41-41 record in the previous season but instead fell back, finishing at 36-46. Its final gasp was a blowout loss to Chicago in the play-in tournament on Wednesday.

As Capela saw it, the Hawks were capable of reeling off three- and four-game win streaks, but then, “we’re not willing to keep doing it because we think more about ourselves.”

Like windshield wipers in a mist, team-oriented play was intermittent.

“That consistency wasn’t there,” said Capela, the team’s leading rebounder and shot blocker. “Sometimes being selfish was overpowering that common goal.”

The headline of the Hawks’ offseason will be what the front office, headed by general manager Landry Fields, will do with the partnership of Trae Young and Dejounte Murray. The experiment of pairing the two star point guards appears to have run its course. The Hawks were 84-70 in the two seasons before Murray’s arrival by trade from San Antonio (including the 2021 run to the Eastern Conference finals that witnesses continue to insist actually happened). But in the two seasons of the DejounTrae tandem, the record is 77-87.

 

The data from an entire season of play: The Hawks were outscored by 6.3 points per 100 possessions when Murray and Young were on the court together, according to Cleaning the Glass. When it was Murray on the floor without Young, the Hawks had a .8-point edge. With Young on and Murray off, the Hawks held a 3.1-point advantage. Of the three combinations — Young and Murray together, Young without Murray, Murray without Young — lineups with Young and Murray were the least efficient on offense and also on defense.

At least publicly, Fields was not ready to abandon the partnership when he spoke Friday, saying that there have been “plenty of moments where I can say, ‘Hey, it looks really good right now.’ You’re always going to take those moments and try to figure out, ‘OK, how can we continuously get better?’ ”

In that moment, he sounded less like someone who, minutes earlier, had emphasized the importance of “making sure that we’re in a state of neutrality” before making offseason decisions and more like someone who gave up three first-round picks for Murray and feels trapped by that decision.

Whatever the Hawks do, that’s far from Fields’ only conundrum as he completes his second season as general manager.

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©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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