{"id":693974,"date":"2026-04-02T14:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/693974\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:03:22","slug":"hawks-continue-post-all-star-surge-with-blowout-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/693974\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks continue post-All-Star surge with blowout win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the season, the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> were a trendy sleeper pick to win the Eastern Conference. Since the All-Star break, they’ve finally lived up to the preseason hype.<\/p>\n

The Hawks started slowly and dealt with injury issues and an unhappy star player in Trae Young. After retooling the team in January and February, the Hawks are a conference-best 18-3 since the break with the NBA’s<\/a> second-best defense after an emphatic 130-101 win over the Orlando Magic<\/a> on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CJ McCollum<\/a> was an underrated addition to the Hawks<\/p>\n

When the Hawks moved Young to the Washington Wizards<\/a>, the trade looked like a salary dump to ditch Young’s expensive contract for 2026-27. However, the 34-year-old guard has been an ideal replacement for Young, providing 18.7 points and 3.8 assists per game while taking a secondary offensive role to Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jalen Johnson. McCollum isn’t a great defender, but he’s still a huge improvement on Young.<\/p>\n

Since McCollum joined the starting lineup for good on Feb. 22, the Hawks are 17-2 with the NBA’s No. 2 defense and No. 3 offense. Dyson Daniels has an excellent assist-to-turnover ratio of 4.1 since the break, while deadline additions Jock Landale, Jonathan Kuminga (12 points Wednesday) and Gabe Vincent have all contributed off the Hawks’ suddenly deep bench.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before the season, the Atlanta Hawks were a trendy sleeper pick to win the Eastern Conference. Since the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3776],"tags":[676,208,3874,7,677,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-693974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-hawks","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-hawks","10":"tag-atlantahawks","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-hawks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116335490783204304","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}