Weekend Reflections: Giannis injury ups chances Hawks get No. 1 draft pick
What I think about some things I saw over the weekend …
Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo said he expects to miss four to six weeks after he suffered a second injury to his right calf Friday night. That’s bad for the NBA, because Antetokounmpo is one of its superstars, but his injury helps the Hawks in two ways.
First, the Bucks are chasing the Hawks in the playoff race. Milwaukee (18-26) is 11th in the Eastern Conference, 2½ games behind the Hawks (22-25). The teams that finish in seventh through 10th place qualify for the Play-In Tournament. The Bucks are likely to fall out of the running with Antetokounmpo sidelined.
Even better for the Hawks is that if Milwaukee piles up more losses, it increases the chances Atlanta will earn the No. 1 pick in the draft this summer.
The Hawks own the rights to the more favorable first-round pick between Milwaukee and New Orleans. If either the Bucks or Pelicans finish among the bottom three in the NBA standings, the Hawks will be among the three teams with the best odds (14%) to win the No. 1 pick in the lottery.
The Pelicans (11-36) slid to near the bottom of the league standings early this season and stayed there. The Bucks are 3-11 when Antetokounmpo sits and have lost five of their past six games. The Hawks can help send the Bucks to the lottery by beating them when the teams play twice in March.
The timeline of four to six weeks would sideline Antetokounmpo for 11 to 20 games. He won’t play again before the Feb. 5 trade deadline. Antetokounmpo’s injury could discourage the Bucks from making a deal to improve the team, especially if they keep losing between now and the deadline.
The Hawks wouldn’t necessarily get the No. 1 pick if they end up with the highest odds. You’ll recall the Hawks won the 2024 draft lottery with only a 3% chance. However, in the seven drafts since the NBA changed the lottery format, one of the teams with the highest odds won the No. 1 pick four times.
Also, the best chance to secure the No. 1 pick isn’t the only advantage for the bottom three teams. Those three teams also have a 50% chance of picking no worse than fourth, an they are guaranteed to pick no later than seventh.
This would be a good year for the Hawks to have a lottery pick.
The group of draft prospects appears to be deep, with potential franchise players at the top. The Hawks have a real shot at drafting one of the three players analysts consider to be worthy of the No. 1 pick: Kansas combo guard Darryn Peterson, BYU wing AJ Dybantsa and Duke power forward Cameron Boozer.
The Hawks were lucky to win the draft lottery in 2024, but analysts considered that class to be relatively weak. They used the No. 1 pick to select French forward Zaccharie Risacher, who doesn’t yet look like a future star player — but neither do any of his draft classmates.
The Hawks will have better prospects to choose from if they pick at or near the top of this year’s draft. The chance of that happening increased with Antetokounmpo’s injury.
Falcons consider ex-GM for GM opening
Falcons officials spent the weekend evaluating seven candidates for their general manager opening. Joe Douglas is an intriguing possibility because he’s the only one of the potential hires who’s done the job before. It makes some sense to hire an experienced GM to work with Matt Ryan, the Falcons’ inexperienced president of football.
Of course, ex-general managers are almost always losing general managers. The Jets had a 32-68 record with the rosters Douglas built 2019-24. When a coach gets fired, they can blame the lack of player talent for not winning enough. Who can a GM blame when the players they pick aren’t good enough to win?
They could try to pin it on the coach. The Jets already had Adam Gase in place when they hired Douglas in 2019, but Douglas led the search for Gase’s successor and picked Robert Saleh. The Jets had a 20-36 record with the Douglas-Saleh partnership.
Douglas assembled a strong defensive roster as Jets GM. But he erred by drafting quarterback Zach Wilson with the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft. The Jets traded Wilson and a seventh-round draft pick to Denver in 2024 for a sixth-round pick.
Douglas tried to overcome the Wilson mistake by acquiring Aaron Rodgers for multiple draft picks, including one in the first round. Rodgers suffered a season-ending injury in Week 1 of 2023. He had a bounceback season in 2024, but the Jets missed the playoffs with a 5-12 record.
The five other candidates for Falcons GM haven’t done the job, but they are high-level executives from winning organizations.
Four of them work for teams that made the playoffs this season. The exception is Chiefs assistant GM Mike Bradway. Kansas City had its playoff streak snapped at 10 years (Bradway has been with the team for seven seasons).
Three quick thoughts
- All it took for Clemson coach Dabo Swinney to soften his hypocritical stance on labor rights for players is losing a good one in the transfer portal. During a Friday news conference Swinney accused Ole Miss coach Pete Golding of tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli, who was at Clemson before reentering the portal and going to Ole Miss. Said Swinney: “You would have to have some kind of collective bargaining. I have always been against this idea of (players as) employees, but quite frankly, that might be the only way to protect the collegiate model.”
- President Donald Trump’s strongman threats to take over Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally, didn’t sit right with a German soccer official. Oke Gottlich said teams participating in this summer’s World Cup in North American should consider a boycott. “What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” Gottlich said, per the AP. “By my reckoning the potential threat is greater now than it was then.” Atlanta is a host city for the World Cup.
- A College Football Playoff committee announced Friday the CFP field will remain at 12 teams. But officials did make changes that will benefit the richest teams. The champions of the Power Four leagues now are guaranteed a spot, regardless of ranking, and Notre Dame is automatically in with a ranking of No. 12 or better. I figure a third consecutive year with no SEC team in the CFP final will be enough for the committee to give the league a bye to the championship game.
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