Hey there, Last Night In Basketballers — I am, as I do every year, re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2026-27 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (podcasts previewing each division with Mo Dakhil are in parentheses):
- Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR) (Podcast)
- Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL) (Podcast)
- Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS) (Podcast)
- Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC) (Podcast)
- Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA) (Podcast)
- Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS) (Podcast)
So without further ado, let's get to the Atlanta Hawks, who last year gave the defending champions their best test of the playoffs.
The stretch run, for real?
The Hawks were 26-30 at the All-Star break last season, holding tight to the No. 10 seed in the East. They finished the year on a 20-6 kick to capture the No. 6 seed in the conference. During that post-All-Star span, they had the NBA's No. 11 offense and No. 2 defense, with the No. 4 net rating behind only the Spurs, Hornets, and Thunder.
Of course, the combined final winning percentage of the teams they played during that stretch was just .461, which is the equivalent of playing against a 37-win team every night. And during the 11-game winning streak that underpinned their 20-6 record, they played only three teams with a winning record.
The secret sauce of their finish was beating the teams you're supposed to beat: they went just 8-6 against teams that finished the year above .500, but 12-0 against losing teams. That's what you're supposed to do, but it also casts some doubt on how real it necessarily was.
Then there was the playoff run. Yes, the Hawks gave the Knicks more of a challenge than any other team based on the fact that they actually won two games in the series, but that series was kind of weird! New York won Game 1 pretty comfortably, then blew a huge lead in Game 2 and made a massive comeback that ultimately fell short in Game 3. Atlanta's two wins came by a combined two points, with CJ McCollum making a game-winner in the final 35 seconds both times. And then the Hawks pretty much got their doors blown off in Games 4 through 6, losing by 16, 29, and 51.
In other words, I'm not sure what, exactly, to take from the Hawks' stretch run, in terms of what it means for their expectations this coming season. Their over-under for this season is 43.5 wins, which means the books expect them to finish a couple games worse than they did last year. Some of that could be due to the strength of the Eastern Conference, some of it could be due to there being fewer tanking teams, and some of it could be due to not necessarily buying into what happened at the end of last year. I don't really know. But this is one of the teams I'm most interested in watching early in the season.