Ask Hawks players about Bogdan Bogdanovic, and they’ll probably tell you he’s still on the court getting shots up or working out after practice.
“Bogi works hard,” John Collins said, emphasis on the hard. “There’s been times when we’ve finished practice, I went into the locker room, showered, messed around for at least an hour, and this is only what, a couple months in, and I see him still on the court sprinting, you know what I mean?”
What was Bogdanovic up to after a Thursday afternoon practice in Brooklyn, per Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce, after the Hawks suffered a narrow loss to the Nets the night before?
“He’s out there playing 1-on-1 with Brandon Goodwin now,” Pierce said. “I’m just sitting there like, ‘Get off the court, man.’ Any challenge that he can find, any drill that he can do, it’s ongoing. He’s a great teammate. You can already see it.”
Four games into the 2020 season, Bogdanovic is still a pretty new addition to the team. Sacramento declined to match the Hawks’ offer Nov. 24, and teams had a compressed amount of time to get acclimated in training camp, so that adds up to about five weeks.
Although he’s mentioned this group is still getting to know each other, given the nine new players added to the roster, in practice, Bogdanovic is clearly a workhorse, and in games, he’s provided a strong scoring presence off the bench the past two games. That’s something the Hawks were missing last season as the second unit struggled to stay in games, when Trae Young was subbed out.
He added 22 points in their 145-141 loss in Brooklyn on Wednesday, going 7-for-14 from the field (50%), 6-for-11 from 3-point range (54.5%) and 2-for-2 from the line (100%), adding four rebounds, one steal and one assist in 29 minutes. In the 128-120 win vs. Detroit on Monday, Bogdanovic tallied 17 points in 30 minutes, going 6-for-10 from the field (60%) and 5-for-7 from 3 (71.4%), adding five rebounds, five assists and a block.
He’s started one of four games, averaging 29 minutes played per game, which trails only De’Andre Hunter (31.8) and Young (31.5). He’s also averaging only 1.3 turnovers per game through the Hawks’ 3-1 start.
For Bogdanovic, the rhythm he’s finding isn’t difficult to explain: “I’m just taking my shots when I’m open and that’s it, very simple.”
As for his intense practice routine, that’s just his style — doing something over and over again until it becomes muscle memory.
“I always believe that confidence comes from the practices and reps, and when you do something so many times, repeatedly ever time, that becomes automatic,” Bogdanovic said. “So I just believe in that, simple as that for me. Some guys don’t like it, they like to feel fresh, they like to be ready for the game and have energy, have legs. For me, that’s how I grew up, and that’s my style.”
Overall, Bogdanovic is averaging 15.3 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 29 minutes per game, shooting 42.9% from 3-point range (though of course it’s a small sample size of four games).
With the acquisitions of Bogdanovic and Danilo Gallinari, per NBA.com, the Hawks are now the only team that has two players who last season attempted at least five catch-and-shoot 3-pointers per game and made at least 40% of those attempts. Bogdanovic had five catch-and-shoot 3′s per game last season, making 40.7% of them (Gallinari had 5.5 catch-and-shoot 3′s, making 41.8%, though he may miss some time after sustaining a right ankle sprain in the loss to the Nets, Pierce said Thursday).
In addition to his shooting ability and ability to create, Bogdanovic’s different approach to the game’s pace diversifies the Hawks’ skill set.
“We have a lot of guys that play with tremendous pace and are really good at it,” Pierce said (such as Young, Collins and Cam Reddish). “Bogi is the opposite. He slows the game down, and he’s always creating a shot for himself or a shot for someone else, and I think having that balance, in addition to him when he’s off the basketball, his shooting capability, but he just gives us a different dimension, and you have to be diverse in this league.”
Basically, with Bogdanovic’s patience, he provides a contrast to the Hawks’ faster-paced players, which helps trip up opposing defenses. Gallinari also has this ability, as does Rondo, Pierce added.
“If a team goes on an 8-0 run, you don’t need a 3 to stop the run, you just need a quality shot,” Pierce said of avoiding that rapid back-and-forth pace when teams are just trying to outscore each other. “You need someone to just kill that momentum, and Bogi to me is that kind of player. Make the team defend for 22 seconds and then shoot a midrange. It sucks the life out of them because they’ve had to defend a little bit longer.”
Bogdanovic also simply has a knack for getting open looks from 3, which so far has paired quite well with the Hawks’ standout facilitators in Young and Rajon Rondo.
“That’s something that he’s really good at, just naturally,” Young said. “So for me it was all about just waiting for that time for him to really get going, and he’s starting to get going even more, and it’s really helping our team. And we’re just excited about what he brings to the table. He’s definitely in a good groove right now.”
In the Hawks’ 122-112 win in Memphis on Saturday, which is the one game he started, Bogdanovic’s shot wasn’t falling, which is bound to happen every once in a while. He went 2-for-10 from the field and 1-for-9 from 3 (though he added nine rebounds and two assists).
But, Pierce won’t judge Bogdanovic’s success strictly on makes and misses.
“He hasn’t had any bad games,” Pierce said. “Bad games aren’t ‘make or miss.’ He’s taking those shots, I’ll live with them. It’s part of the game. Making shots and missing shots is part of the game. I trust his work. I’ve been praising the fact that he’s probably our hardest post-practice worker. And if he’s going to get those shots all year, then we’ll be fine. There aren’t bad games for him when he’s not making them, it’s just not going down.
“He’s been really effective getting the ball to other guys, he’s been really effective playing pick-and-roll, and when we can create shots and he can get those types of looks, we’ll take them, make or miss, all day.”
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