The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hawks upgrade defense with coaching moves
Top assistant been in seat before; new hire’s vision aligns with team.
The Hawks lost one of their top assistant coaches this offseason, so they made moves to replace him. On Monday, the Hawks promoted assistant coach Joe Prunty to the top chair and hired Mike Longabardi.
Prunty boasts over 20 years of NBA coaching experience and has been the top assistant before, as well as being interim head coach for the Bucks in 2018. He led them to the playoffs before losing to the Celtics 4-3 in the first round. That experience is something Hawks coach Nate Mcmillan is ready to use to his advantage. Mcmillan said Prunty will have a little more responsibility as far as helping to manage game plans and practices.
The Hawks also want to tap into the roughly 19 years of NBA coaching experience Longabardi, 49, will bring to the team. Longabardi has two NBA championships under his belt, one with the Celtics and another with the Cavaliers. Mcmillan said Longabardi had what Mcmillan was looking to bring to the staff.
“Just my conversation when I interviewed him, really all the things that he talked about, I believe that defense should be played the same way,” Mcmillan told The Atlanta Journal-constitution. “Basically, we were aligned with each other on most of the things that we’d like for our teams to do on the floor.”
In his first 10 seasons, the teams Longabardi coached regularly ranked in the top 10 defenses in the league. Since then, each of his teams, except one, have ranked in the bottom 15 defenses in the NBA.
“I just look at his all of his coaching. You’re going to have good and bad seasons,” Mcmillan said. “I don’t think any coach that has spent time in the league has had great seasons every year. But he does have two championships up under his belt. He has coached some elite players, and they’ve had really good defenses. He’s
worked with some of the best players in this game in the Kevin Garnett and Lebron James of the worlds.”
“He has the ability. He has the know-how. He has the experience of coaching a young team, as well as a veteran team. I think the big thing was, he was excited to come to Atlanta to work with us. He had a couple other offers that he could have taken, and he liked our roster, and our plans, our vision for the future, and he wanted to be a part of that.”
Mcmillan mentioned the two agreed that there would be some flexibility as they figured out how to take advantage of what the players were best equipped to handle. In addition to that, Mcmillan said Longabardi was a fan of getting back to the basics and believes in mastering man-defense in order to play good zone defense.
The Hawks, though, have added a strong two-way player in Dejounte Murray, and they’ll look to continue developing their recent draft picks into strong players on defense. Plus, they’ve added a couple of other free agents who have reputations as strong defenders.
“We want the team to be physical,” Mcmillan said. “We want them to be able to pressure, guard their man, be able to play oneon-one defense, with a strong weakside, off-the-ball defense. Rebounding is the key to winning. So we want them to be connected on the defensive end of the floor.”
The Hawks had the fourth-worst defense by the end of the last regular season. While Longabardi will bring his defensive acumen to the team, all of the strategizing on defense won’t fall squarely on his shoulders. Mcmillan said he will take on some of that work and that there is an expectation of improvement.