After longtime Spurs assistant Mike Budenholzer was hired to become the head coach of the Hawks this summer, he reached out to his new point guard, Jeff Teague, and spoke to him about the way he wanted the Hawks to play.
For Teague, who spent the first four years of his career playing in variations of a slowdown, isolation system — first under Mike Woodson and later under Larry Drew — what he heard in that phone call from Budenholzer was music to his ears.
“The pace … he wants to play really fast,” Teague told The Post this week. “In previous years here in Atlanta we played pretty slow pace, ISO and posting up on the block. But he wanted to get out, get up and down and get a lot of shots up and play a lot faster.”
The Hawks under Budenholzer look much different than in previous iterations, playing significantly faster and exhibiting much more ball movement. No player has benefited more than Teague, who – freed from the methodical isolation offense that used to be dominated by Joe Johnson and then later Josh Smith under previous regimes – is averaging career highs in points (16.9) and assists (7.9) while playing at that faster pace with talented offensive options such as Kyle Korver, Paul Millsap and, until he recently was lost for the season with a torn pectoral muscle, Al Horford.
“It just gives me more opportunities and puts the ball in my hands a little bit more than in previous years,” Teague said. “It’s easy to play in this system. I think everybody can be successful. I just think it’s a good system for young point guards who want to get up and down, fast players. It blends perfectly with our team.”
When Teague became a restricted free agent this summer, there were some legitimate questions about whether or not he would even return to Atlanta at all. The Hawks seemed content to let him test the open market. They were hoping to land Atlanta native Dwight Howard, in order to pair him with Horford and possibly Smith, who was an unrestricted free agent.
Eventually, though, Howard chose to go to the Rockets, Smith signed with the Pistons, and the Hawks – after Teague signed a four-year, $32 million offer sheet with the Bucks – matched it in order to retain him. They also re-signed Korver and signed Paul Millsap away from the Jazz.
Teague said the underwhelming market didn’t surprise him, given his restricted status in free agency, and he doesn’t need another reason to have a chip on his shoulder after — he says — being underestimated all the way back to when he was a lightly-recruited high school star in Indiana.
“Being from Indiana, and at the time I didn’t play big-time AAU basketball,” he said. “I played local basketball, and when I got the opportunity to play AAU it was my senior year, and I did pretty well.
“Nobody knew who I was, so I didn’t have big-time schools recruiting me. Wake Forest was probably my biggest school, and I went there.”
You could say Teague has been in a similar situation through his first few years in the NBA, being a point guard on a team where the ball was very often in the hands of a wing player. Johnson was the focal point of the offense during his tenure before being traded to the Nets in July 2012, and then Smith inherited that role last season before he followed Johnson out the door.
Now Teague is getting a chance to step into the role that Tony Parker has filled so wonderfully over the years in the Spurs’ beautiful offense, and he has given Budenholzer a nice foundation to build around in his first year as coach.
“He’s a unique talent,” Budenholzer said of Teague. “His ability to kind of do a little bit of everything at the point guard position. … He’s really embraced the responsibility and the opportunity that has come with what we’re [doing]. There’s been a little change in personnel, change in style and system, and there’s a lot of responsibility for him, and he’s really taken that and embraced it.
“I think his ability to pass has been, I don’t like the word surprised, but he’s impressed me with how he can see the floor and really get guys shots and get guys the ball. And he’s strong and aggressive and can get to the rim and can do a little bit of everything, whereas some guys are distributors or scorers, and it’s hard to do both. He’s got a pretty good balance of where he can do both that I maybe wouldn’t have been as appreciative of having not been around him every day for a couple of months.”
Things aren’t going to get any easier for Teague and the Hawks now that Horford – the team’s unquestioned leader and star player – is out for the season following his second pectoral tear in three seasons.
But even with Horford’s injury casting a pall over the final few months of the season, there are plenty of reasons for optimism in Atlanta. The Hawks have the ability to swap picks with the Nets – taking the higher of the two – both this year and next, potentially giving them a lottery pick in each draft. Plus, they have salary-cap room to sign a significant free agent this summer and potentially one or more in 2015.
All of that, combined with having faith in his new coach, has Teague excited about the possibilities in Atlanta.
“With his system, I know guys will be excited to play here, and I think he’s a great coach,” Teague said. “He’s a great guy. He’s a great guy to be around personally.
“But I mean, Atlanta’s an exciting city, and I don’t know why people wouldn’t want to come here and play, and we have a great group of guys. So, hopefully we’ll all be here next year, and whoever comes along helps.”
Hits keep coming for Suns, Pelicans
Another week, another round of devastating injuries in the NBA, with each of them affecting teams at both ends of the standings.
Let’s start with Eric Bledsoe, one half of the Suns’ two-headed monster at point guard alongside Goran Dragic and a big reason why Phoenix has been the NBA’s most surprising team this season under first-year coach Jeff Hornacek. Bledsoe will be out indefinitely after undergoing surgery on the meniscus in his right knee Friday morning.
While the expectation reportedly is Bledsoe will be back at some point this season, it remains to be seen whether the Suns — which likely will go into the draft with four first-round picks — will be able to hang in playoff position in the loaded Western Conference without one of their catalysts.
In the long term, the other big question in the wake of Bledsoe’s surgery is what kind of offer he will get in restricted free agency this summer. The Suns likely will match any offer he gets – including a max offer sheet of around $58 million over four years – but it remains to be seen whether the injury will impact how teams view the athletic dynamo.
On the other end of the spectrum are the Pelicans, who will be without point guard Jrue Holiday indefinitely after announcing Friday morning he has a stress fracture in his right tibia.
That injury, coupled with forward Ryan Anderson being out indefinitely after a scary fall in a win in Boston last week resulted in a herniated disk, means the Pelicans’ scant playoff hopes have vanished.
The bigger question is whether the Pelicans can plummet far enough in the standings to land in the top five in the draft – and thus not forfeit their pick to Philadelphia as a consequence of the trade they made to acquire Holiday at the draft last year.
Currently New Orleans is 15-19 and 3.5 games ahead of Cleveland and Philadelphia, who are tied for the fifth worst record in the NBA. Let the tanking race begin!
Deng trade makes little sense for Cavs
The Cavaliers made the big splash of the week, turning the deadline for the rest of Andrew Bynum’s $12 million contract this year to be guaranteed into a chance to land Luol Deng in a trade from the Bulls for three picks – a pair of second-rounders and a protected first-rounder courtesy of Sacramento.
The move doesn’t make a ton of sense for Cleveland in the bigger view. The Cavaliers are off to a brutal start, as exhibited by their record and some obvious signs of poor chemistry, and the upcoming draft is deep with impact talent.
But if you think back to the draft lottery last May, though, it makes a lot more sense. Dan Gilbert stood up and said, after winning the right to the No. 1 overall pick, that Cleveland “won’t be back here again!” in 2014. This move gives the Cavaliers a better chance of avoiding that position, though there’s no guarantee. Adding a true professional like Deng to a young locker room can only be beneficial. But the franchise would’ve been better off having one more rough year on the court and getting a second surefire young star to play alongside Kyrie Irving.
There’s also the issue of whether Deng – an impending unrestricted free agent – will re-sign in Cleveland, which would only leave more egg on the Cavaliers’ faces if he chooses to bolt in July.
For Chicago, the move makes perfect sense. It gets them below the luxury-tax threshold – always a consideration for notoriously thrifty owner Jerry Reinsdorf – and allows them to get something for Deng, who was clearly not in the team’s plans moving forward. The bigger question will be how this impacts the future of coach Tom Thibodeau, who was a huge fan of Deng’s and has made it clear he isn’t happy with the decision. There are already rumblings he may wind up elsewhere next season – and that the Bulls might not mind, given his repeated clashes with the front office.
Given Thibodeau’s tactical brilliance on the sidelines, this bears watching moving forward.
Throw it down, big fella!
Finally, a note on Bill Walton. Anyone who grew up with “NBA on NBC” double- and tripleheaders on weekends throughout the winter and into the spring and early summer during the playoffs had to enjoy Walton’s irresistible love for the game, for life, and for his ability to somehow connect them seamlessly.
That’s why it was such a joy to turn on a terrific college basketball game Thursday night – one featuring top-ranked Arizona (led by standout Aaron Gordon, a Shawn Marion-type forward who is one of the gems in the expected 2014 draft class) and a talented and inexperienced UCLA team – and hearing Walton on the call. At one point, after seeing Phil Jackson and John Lithgow sitting together courtside, Walton thanked them on the air for their creativity, artistry and vision, then transitioned to the need for innovation in both basketball and life by referencing the sixth anniversary of the debut of the iPhone, then brought the conversation full-circle to a thought about UCLA’s program.
It was a wonderful listen, and hopefully we’ll be hearing Walton on the call more often in the weeks, months and years to come – and possibly even back doing some national NBA broadcasts. In the meantime, though, here’s a delightful Walton clip – here he’s calling a Suns-Lakers game with Mike Tirico – in which he talks about Boris Diaw and perfectly sums up why he’s the most unique color analyst around: