When Jeff Teague and DeMarre Carroll went to a Drake concert last year, they likely went with extraordinary expectations: Who would Drake bring out as a guest (Lil Wayne? 2 Chainz?) and how long they’d cry during “Marvin’s Room”—all reasonable thoughts to have before a Drake concert. When they got to the show, however, the biggest surprise of the night didn’t happen on stage; it happened when they got to their seats and found Atlanta Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer sitting in the crowd.
1.
I like to think that Budenholzer, a publicly professed Drake fan ever since his own players saw him at that show, really, really, really gets pumped up and ready to coach when listening to “Worst Behavior.” (He once told the Associated Press: “I have a lot of respect for artists, especially Drake, that bring it every night.”) These bars from the song’s first verse should hit Budenholzer right in the gut:
Look at you, look at you and look at you
Aww, I'm glad that they chose us
Cause man it's a mission, tryna fight to the finish
Just to see if I'm finished
Picture Budenholzer, a doughy faced middle-manager styled type, mumbling, “You ain't know, now you know now,” to himself as Jeff Teague cuts to the lane, kicks it baseline to the corner for DeMarre Carroll, who then makes the extra pass to Kyle Korver, who’s zipping off a weakside pin-down screen (Korver’s favorite type of screen to shoot off of) from Hawks bigman Al Horford. Korver mentally sorts the same 20-point checklist he ticks through every time he shoots. Check, check, check, shot. He nails the open trey from the wing. Another three points for the Hawks—your current Eastern Conference leaders and week-to-week “Are they for real?” hypothesis test subjects.
2.
The Hawks are unbelievable in that sense because they’re such unlikely contenders this season. An organization that averaged 45 wins before Budenholzer was hired in 2013, the Hawks were the NBA’s first team to 50 wins this season, and had four of their starting five (Paul Millsap, Teague, Korver, and Horford) in the All-Star Game. Nobody’s calling them a “Big Four” though. In a league where GMs pile picks, players, and easily disposable contracts in the hope that one, two, or maybe three superstar players will agitate a move in their direction, the Hawks have generally eschewed from such superstar-or-nothing strategies since current GM Danny Ferry took over in 2012.
Ferry has shunned the contemporary notion that you need to have “Big Three” to contend for a title, as well as the more widely-held belief that you need at least one top 10-15 caliber player to build a championship roster around. But acquiring players like that—the LeBron, James Harden, or Anthony Davis’ of the world—not only require healthy doses of luck, but also maximum salary contracts. In the absence of Kevin Durant or Stephen Curry falling into Ferry’s lap, he’s invested the cap evenly throughout the squad. All-Star power forward Paul Millsap is the Hawks’ only eight-digit earner, and even at $12 million, he’s considered a bargain. According to Sham Sports, the entire All-Star foursome of Teague, Millsap, Horford, and Korver will only run the Hawks a total of $35.2 million this season. The New York Knicks, by comparison, will pay Carmelo Anthony, Andrea Bargnani, and Shane Larkin $35.5 million. It’s not hard to be smarter than the Knicks, but any GM in the NBA would take those four Hawks on those contracts in an instant.
3.
A team without superstar salaries also means that there are no superstar personalities walking around either (things might be different if Nick Young were in ATL though). Budenholzer’s team is devoid of fame-grabbing, attention-sucking ME types—i.e. players he was accustomed to not having to coach. Budenholzer comes from Gregg Popovich’s coaching tree. As an 18-year veteran of the San Antonio Spurs coaching staff, he out-dates even Poppovich down in San Antonio.
Budenholzer has successfully brought the Spurs’ culture of togetherness, teamwork, and personal sacrifice to the Hawks. He hasn’t done it through tyrannical fear mongering within the team, as one might expect given that he’s spent less than two seasons in Atlanta. Quick results have been engineered by Budenholzer’s holistic approach to off-court team life. He began having players do simple things together like sitting next to one another in team meetings, and eating as a team on the road. He wanted everybody to influence each other in close-quarter situations so that in the fourth quarter, when solo stars usually take over games with 1v1 scoring, the team lacking a Carmelo Anthony or Russell Westbrook can trust itself to topple Goliath.
Teague echoed that sentiment to Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins: “That’s who we are. Everybody touches the ball, nobody dances with it, and even if you’ve got a layup, you give it to Kyle Korver.”
4.
Everybody on the Hawks is acutely aware of their limitations, but they understand how their roles can connect to form a formidable beachhead. They’re the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers of today’s NBA.
The basics of the game are what Budenholzer and his team stress: passing, off-the-ball movement, and intelligence—attributes that some ball-dominant, isolation-based NBA offenses have strayed from. Although the Hawks’ starting five is completely American, they pass, dribble, and shoot like refined European pros, not atypical AAU ballers. Still, Budenzholer has brought the Spurs’ international impetus to the Hawks, coaching up inside-out Macedonian center Pero Antic and Dennis Schröder, the German with Rajon Rondo’s flows.
Their formula is simple: teamwork, sacrifice, cohesiveness, and more teamwork. It’s what Isaiah Thomas referred to as the “Secret of Basketball” in Bill Simmons’ book. As Simmons explained it, “Teams only win titles when their best players forget about statistics, sublimate their own games for the greater good, and put their egos on hold.” In Atlanta, however, the secret is out, and for the rest of the NBA, if you’re reading this, it’s too late. The Hawks have arrived.
