The Hawks had eight players picked out over the course of the season, most in the Eastern Conference and tied with the Suns for most in the league. This is expected for a team with a deep playoff run but as was said in the opening paragraph that run was very out of nowhere for the participants picking players.
Until Nate McMillan's promotion to the head coach position, it looked very likely that only Trae Young and Clint Capela were on a trajectory to get picked out. Getting all of your players on bad teams out of the way is essential in the Pick One to leave the best possible roster you can for the postseason. Atlanta's run to the Eastern Conference Finals illustrates how little faith we had for them to not only make the playoffs, never mind win a series, never mind win two.
But as the favorites laid before them kept falling, Atlanta's spreadsheet became harder and harder to look at. We lost Young in the first round against the Knicks. While we all waited for the Sixers to get their heads out of their asses in round two, Capela, John Collins, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and Kevin Huerter all came off the board.
The Eastern Conference Finals was another series where the Hawks refused to die and their valiant efforts saw them get to six games with the champs with a skeleton crew. Danilo Gallinari, Onyeka Okongwu, and Lou Williams all saw their Pick One paths end and Cam Reddish was a DNP away from joining them.
In the end, only three players on the scoresheet went unused for the 2021-2022 season. Now it should be pointed out that going through these retrospectives not everybody on a particular scoresheet ended the season with that team. It was however the last team they played for before going overseas, to the G-League, or being outright released. Bruno Fernando and Tony Snell made the playoff roster for Atlanta but neither even got as much as a flier from our selection committee. Third-year man Brandon Goodwin played in 47 regular season games and even had a 20 PRA game in January against the Sixers. Alas he never made it onto our collective radar.
| PICKED OUT (8 PLAYERS) Bogdan Bogdanovic- 29.9 AVG PRA Clint Capela- 32.1 AVG PRA John Collins- 25.8 AVG PRA Danilo Gallinari- 19.8 AVG PRA Kevin Huerter- 17.1 AVG PRA Onyeka Okongwu (R)- 10.7 AVG PRA Lou Williams (7 g w/ ATL, 2 g with LAC)- 12.1 AVG PRA Trae Young- 45.1 AVG PRA |
| TWO TIMERS (3 PLAYERS) Solomon Hill- 4.5 AVG PRA (2 DNP) Nathan Knight (R)- 0.0 AVG PRA Skylar Mays (R)- 5.0 AVG PRA |
All Player Images From Basketball Reference, Hawks Logo From Wikipedia