Scouting one-pager: Atlanta Hawks (ATL)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,541 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Vít Krejčí is a genuine shot-maker: +6.1 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Mouhamed Gueye (1.22 xPPS on 290 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: C. McCollum - N. Alexander-Walker - O. Okongwu - J. Johnson - D. Daniels (+20.4/100 over 848 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| ATL | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.107 | 1.091 | +0.016 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.117 | 1.097 | +0.020 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -1.0 | -0.5 | -0.4 |
| Rim share | 28.8% | 28.4% | +0.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 7.9% | 10.0% | -2.1 pp |
| Three share | 42.9% | 41.5% | +1.4 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 27.1% | 25.9% | +1.2 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.6% | 1.8% | -0.2 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Jalen Johnson | 1,228 | 1.075 | 1.084 | -0.9 | -0.9 | +0.5 |
| Nickeil Alexander-Walker | 1,195 | 1.127 | 1.097 | +3.0 | +2.2 | +1.9 |
| Onyeka Okongwu | 860 | 1.128 | 1.133 | -0.6 | -0.6 | -0.5 |
| Dyson Daniels | 777 | 1.063 | 1.142 | -7.9 | -6.3 | +3.4 |
| CJ McCollum | 625 | 1.064 | 1.037 | +2.7 | +1.6 | +3.4 |
| Zaccharie Risacher | 536 | 1.088 | 1.177 | -8.9 | -5.9 | -1.4 |
| Vít Krejčí | 308 | 1.256 | 1.105 | +15.1 | +6.1 | -1.1 |
| Mouhamed Gueye | 290 | 1.041 | 1.223 | -18.1 | -9.6 | +0.5 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| C. McCollum - N. Alexander-Walker - O. Okongwu - J. Johnson - D. Daniels | 391 | 848 | +20.4 |
| N. Alexander-Walker - O. Okongwu - J. Johnson - D. Daniels - Z. Risacher | 304 | 680 | +1.0 |
| N. Alexander-Walker - O. Okongwu - V. Krejčí - J. Johnson - D. Daniels | 189 | 408 | -4.7 |