Just two days separate the Hawks rookies from their opportunity to go out and compete.
Over the past three days, the Hawks’ Summer League roster has battled it out in the team’s minicamp leading to its first game Friday in Las Vegas. The Hawks kick off the tournament against the Kings, and they have one thing on their mind: Win.
“Honestly, I want to win,” Hawks second-round pick Seth Lundy said. “I’m going down there with the mindset of winning. I’m sure everybody else is, too. We’ve really feel like we got a chance to go down there and win. We got the guys to do it. So, why not?”
The Hawks have yet to hoist the Summer League championship trophy since the competition began in 2013. Last year, the Hawks finished Summer League 2-3, but this year the team believes it’s stacked.
This year, the Hawks have all three of their draft picks – Lundy, first-round pick Kobe Bufkin and Mouhamed Gueye, a second-round pick whose draft rights they acquired from the Celtics. They filled out the team with sophomore wings AJ Griffin and Tyrese Martin, among others.
The roster also includes Vit Krejci, a young player looking to solidify his spot on the roster.
Both Krejci and Martin head into Summer League on nonguaranteed deals, and they’ll look make their case to the Hawks about why they should be on the team next season.
Krecji and Martin will have plenty of competition from guys like Brady Manek, who spent last season overseas in Australia and Turkey. Manek averaged averaged 13.1 points on 55.7% shooting from the floor and 40.7% on 3-point shots with the Perth Wildcats. He also pulled down 5.3 rebounds per game and doled out 1.7 assists.
Manek, like his Summer League teammates, has enjoyed the opportunity to be back in the gym. He’s looking forward to the extended play he will have this summer, but he has his his sights on living in the moment.
“Just just play hard, control what I can control and play hard whenever I’m out there and hopefully make few shots,” he said.
A 24-year-old former North Carolina Tar Heel, Manek caught the attention of plenty of fans as he helped to propel to North Carolina to the NCAA championship one year ago. They eventually lost to Kansas when a pair of 3-point attempts to tie the score fell short.
But for Manek and the Hawks, right now is all about competing and learning.
Hawks assistant Antonio Lang will coach the team in this year’s Summer League. Several of the team’s other assistants will join him on the bench.
So far, the team has soaked up plenty of tips not only from Lang, but from the rest of the assistants who filled the gym during the minicamp.
“I think everybody here, even coaches and volunteers, everybody’s trying to learn,” Manek said. “Everybody’s trying to get something out of this, and it’s been fun. We got a lot of people that know a lot about basketball, a lot of basketball history, whether level college, anything.”
Despite the time being short, the players already have felt positive developments in their game.
For Bufkin, the tips that the coaching staff has fed him have given him confidence that he will be able to handle the speed of the game at the NBA level. Gueye, Lundy and Griffin all took note of Bufkin’s ability to change pace.
Bufkin and Griffin, who likely will play only two Summer League games, will share ballhandling duties. But Bufkin said he’s looking forward to sharing his versatility on the defensive end.
“And then hopefully catch my flow early on offense,” he said.
But the goal for Bufkin and the Hawks is simple.
“To go win,” Bufkin said. “To go win, of course. And then obviously (I have) smaller goals, just finding the flow of the game and then being able to apply (what we learned) when we get to the preseason and regular season.”
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