Atlanta Hawks at Washington Wizards
Time: 6 PM CT (NBA LP)
Spread: WAS -6.5
Total: 232.5
Odds c/o 5dimes
ATLANTA
The Atlanta Hawks have lost six of its last 10, and the team is just 17-35, firmly out of the playoff race as the halfway point of the season has now passed. It is still not a team without hope and encouragement, but the Hawks are spending this season developing its rookie point guard Trae Young while seeing what type of chemistry he and its top player John Collins could potentially have together.
Both have shined, but the Hawks lack depth and talent beyond these top-two youngsters, and the season has been tough for it so far.
Young and Collins have combined to average 34.3 points per game between them, with Collins leading the way at 18.8 points per game and 10.6 rebounds per night. Collins missed the beginning of the season, but he has been dynamite in his past 25 games since returning. Young has had his rookie struggles, but he has also had his bright moments to offset them. He’s proving to be a good distributor, perhaps better than expected, tallying 7.3 assists per game. The shooting, thought to be a strength of his, has been the issue: Young is connecting on just 39.4 percent of his looks while knocking down a woeful 28.8 percent from three-point range.
Swingman Taurean Prince should prove to be valuable No. 3 option behind Young and Collins, but the Hawks desperately lack depth and also lack talent at the 5-position where it platoons the offensively challenged Dewayne Dedmon and Alex Len. Jeremy Lin is also seeing too little of a role for a player capable of providing major scoring outbursts. The one-time freak of nature has averaged just 19 minutes per game, and he is still averaging double-figure scoring.
But the Hawks have chosen to develop Young rather than play him off the ball with Lin more at the 1. That surely would produce more wins, but Atlanta is focused on player development in a season that had been determined to be a rebuilding year long before the point we have arrived at. It is something of a lost season for the Hawks, but allowing Young and Collins to build chemistry is far from a lost cause.
WAS TEAM NOTES:
The Washington Wizards have split its last 10 but it still lingers eight games below .500 and it is out of the playoff picture in the East. It trails No. 8 Miami by 2.5 games in the standings.
The Wiz have begun to pay better attention to the defensive end, and that is the primary reason behind its recent success. Only two of its last six opponents have scored more than 106 points, and that was a 140-138 loss to the Toronto Raptors, as well as its last 118-126 loss to the Golden State Warriors.
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Trevor Ariza has assumed a comfortable role as the team’s No. 3 option after John Wall and Bradley Beal. Beal is having an All-Star season and career year. He is averaging 24.7 points, five rebounds, and five assists per game. Ariza helps tie it together with his two-way play, as one of the best defensive wings in the NBA. He is averaging nearly 15 points per game in his 16 games as a Wizards, and it appears that (though no one thought it could) he could change the Wizards’ fate this season.?In its 17 games with Ariza, the Wizards have fared 8-9, which is an improvement and a mark good enough to be playoff-worthy in the Eastern Conference. When analysts and fans talk about team-changing talents, Ariza is not the first to come to mind, but he has been just that thus far for Washington.
