Flying Further Into Mediocrity
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The Atlanta Hawks fired head coach Lloyd Pierce yesterday.
It’s OK to talk about how a head coach that was very popular with the fanbase seemingly never had a shot at guiding this team through a massive rebuild. After coming over from Philadelphia, where he spent time as an assistant coach under Bret Brown and “trusting the process”, Pierce was hired to guide the Hawks on May 11, 2018. About 40 days later, the Hawks front office traded Luka Doncic to the Dallas Mavericks for Trae Young. The Mavs, after starting slow, are above .500. The Hawks continue to flounder. The front office blames Pierce for that.
Pierce was 63-120 in two-plus seasons with the Hawks. In each of those seasons, he’s been given one of the bottom five rosters of all of basketball. That includes this season. On paper, Atlanta was supposed to be markedly better this season. The front office went out and signed Danilo Gallinari, Rajon Rondo, Kris Dunn and Bogdan Bogdanovic. They selected Onyeka Okongwu with the sixth overall pick. Ownership made it clear that it’s playoff or bust.
Except sports doesn’t work like that. If you’re not loading up on elite, superstar talents in free agency (think, I don’t know, LeBron James or Kevin Durant) then you cannot reasonably expect overnight contention. It takes time. What the Hawks had been doing made sense, and had the franchise on what seemed like a solid path forward. Then they spent gobs of money, all to chase the 7th seed.
Regardless of the valid critiques of Pierce, including late-game mistakes, lack of adjustments, and a team culture that fluctuated depending on what day it was, he was never given a fair shake. Gallinari has missed 12 games. Rondo has missed 16. Bogdan 25. Dunn, who was supposed to come in and be a long-awaited elite defender on the permitter, has yet to play a game this season. De’Andre Hunter, arguably the team’s best all-around player, hasn’t played since January 29. Okongwu was the Hawks pick at six, even though the team knew Clint Capela would be ready for the season, and while guys like Tyrese Haliburton and Obi Toppin were on the board.
The Hawks effectively rushed what was turning out to be a solid rebuild into a fractured mess. Now the off-season spending spree possibly leaves them unable to resign John Collins, which is a shame, because the core of Young, Collins, De’Andre Hunter, and Capela isn’t the problem, and could perhaps grow into one of the better quartets in the Eastern Conference. It’s the gunk around them that is stinking up the place.
Is it fair to ask whether or not Pierce would’ve been given more time if he were not a Black head coach? Of course, it is. It’s always in the back of your mind. But this go around seems more like a study in impractical impatience of sports franchises. After all, Minnesota fired head coach Ryan Saunders last month. Saunders has many of the same valid criticisms that Pierce does, yet he too never really had a shot at success. The roster is one of the worst, if not the worst, in all of basketball.
Nate McMillan takes the helm as the interim head coach. McMillan last coached in Indiana and was dismissed last summer after compiling a 3-16 postseason record and not working well with the franchise’s star player, Victor Oladipo. Oladipo now plays in Houston. The Pacers are 3 games under .500, just one spot above the Hawks in the East standings.
Many of these franchises have deep seated organizational issues. Firing the head coach is the easy way out. Fixing a bad roster with abysmal contracts is the tough part. The Hawks are about to find out just how difficult it is.