The Atlanta Hawks lost to the Philadelphia 76ers 126-116 on Friday night in quite ordinary fashion. Atlanta put up an admirable fight consistent with their talent level, but couldn’t sustain the effort into the fourth quarter, consistent with their 6-6 record. Joel Embiid scored 32 points for Philly, and while Trae Young shot 5-14 from the floor, he went 10-10 from the line and dished 13 assists.
Jalen Johnson was Atlanta’s second-leading scorer with 18 points, two of which came on this transition dunk around Embiid:
So yeah. Ordinary stuff.
Now in his third season, this is what Jalen Johnson does. Thrust into Atlanta’s starting lineup not by way of injury or space-clearing trade, but simply because he’s played too well to keep off the court, Johnson is averaging 15 points and eight rebounds in 30 minutes a night. And as you might expect from an über-athletic, 21-year-old wing, many of his buckets come in transition.
Readers, you think Trae Young likes playing with this guy?
Whether as a ball-handler or lane-filler, Johnson is a threat to finish any transition opportunity with a bang. His insertion into the starting lineup gives both Young and Dejounte Murray a partner in crime when pushing the pace, and Atlanta’s two lead guards have grown more and more daring when feeding Johnson on the run. Why wouldn’t they?
The ex-Blue Devil is a tremendously malleable athlete. He doesn’t mind jumping off one foot or two, trying to go through contact or around it, with a runway or off a standstill, or finishing with the off-hand. Johnson simply takes the most efficient route to the rim, often above it. He is a career 76% finisher inside the restricted area, per Basketball Reference, and while that career has only spanned ~1500 minutes, a number that will double by the end of this season, did you see what I just said? Seventy-six percent!
Take a transition dunk like this:
Murray leads most other players too far with that pass, but not Johnson. He lunges from the 3-point arc to the first hash mark in one step, then dunks the ball on his next. The freakiest part may be how easy he makes it looks.
Here’s an entirely different type of finish, but one that’s just as impressive. It comes in a half-court setting, where Johnson picks up an o-board, then hop-steps into a floater. In the process, the young wing pinballs off two defenders, first on the hop-step, then on the finish. Yet, neither bit of contact throws him off balance, as he finishes what should probably be an and-one:
Much of this, though, is not new. Sure, Johnson is more comfortable and stronger on the court in his third season, but being a deadly finisher at the rim has always been the foundation of his appeal, particularly as a teammate of Trae Young. This season, however, he’s filling in the rest of his game with some predictable skills, and others that may catch the uninitiated by surprise.
For the former, I’m talking about long-range shooting, of course. It’s early, but Johnson is hitting 44.1% of his threes, up from just 29% last season. I’d bet the farm he won’t finish the year in the 40s, but he does look much more comfortable as a shooter, willing to let them go even off slight movement:
Playing next to two high-usage guards in Young and Murray leaves little choice for Johnson; he’s gotta take (and make enough of) his open looks. And while there’s still some hiccups for the 2021 first-round pick in this regard — his courage is often determined by the result of his previous attempt — it’s so much easier to give Johnson 36 minutes of tick when he’s letting it fly like this.
Now that defenders have to respect the Hawks’ youngest starter, it gives Johnson the opportunity to attack closeouts and get to his bread-and-butter, served at the rim. A tale as old as time:
However the quality that’s always surprised, the quality that stirred grinning curiosity among draft prognosticators is Johnson’s passing. As a high-flying prospect, he was known for, well, what you’d expect. Dunk after dunk, with flashes of advanced shot-making and footwork inside the arc. But those who watched closely, even prior to his days at Duke, were delighted by dimes like this:
That’s continued during his burst onto the scene this season. Johnson’s passing follows the same fun formula as his finishing. Need to throw a routine bounce-pass? Fine. Need to cradle the ball off a live dribble and throw a laser across the baseline with the left? Sure:
Johnson’s passing ability has translated into the half-court as well, and we’re seeing glimpses of a connective passing style that is eminently desirable next to more ball-dominant players:
Johnson has the physical ability to make any pass, with the court-vision and understanding of defensive weak points to see them too. I’m especially intrigued by his capabilities as a roll-man. We know he can catch lobs when diving to the basket, and if he’s on the short-roll, the help defense can’t be late to the party unless they want to end up on a poster. That’ll lead to 2-on-1 situations like the below, which Johnson’s already shown a penchant for exploiting:
Whether on the perimeter or as a roll-man, patterns will become clear. There are only so many ways for a defense to guard a high pick-and-roll, and only so many ways for Johnson to see it from the corners. At just two assists a game, his passing output hasn’t matched the flashes, but the 21-year-old brings an undeniable connective juice to Atlanta’s starting lineup.
We’ll close with Johnson’s vastly improved defense, probably the reason — along with a greater willingness to shoot the three-ball — Hawks Head Coach Quin Snyder felt comfortable yanking Saddiq Bey from the starting lineup for him. The 6’8″ wing has shown two high-level skills on that end: sliding his feet, and tracking the ball. Here he is bodying up to Tyrese Maxey, completely unmoved by a series of head-fakes before swatting the ball out-of-bounds:
Johnson will still swipe at the ball on the perimeter, a habit that he’s wisely cut down on this season, but it’s almost always of his own accord. In other words, all the head-fakes and hesitations in the world won’t convince him to reach. He picks and chooses his spots, so fake-heavy isolations like Maxey’s above rarely shift Johnson. He’s guarding positions 1-4, and not in the half-ass way where the 1s aren’t shifty and the 4s are like, Dorian Finney-Smith (who’s playing great ball by the way)!
You see the agility above, and here’s the strength. Johnson bodies up to Julius Randle, is unmoved by a physical post-up, then forces the lefty into a tough, well-contested fadeaway:
Johnson’s three blocks against the Sixers brought his block-rate to 1.9%, an elite mark for non-centers that’s also in line with his career averages. Throw in strong rebounding at his position, and there’s no glaring weakness in Johnson’s D, certainly not one that would keep him off the floor.
Subpar screen navigation may hamper his ability to stick to the Tyrese Maxeys of the world for extended stretches of game-time, but that’s a small blip on the progress of his Year Three. When the Hawks faced the Oklahoma City Thunder, Quin Snyder entrusted Johnson with the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander matchup when Dejounte Murray sat. Six-eight 21-year-olds that can reasonably slide their feet with SGA on one night, then provide rebounding and shot-blocking value on another don’t come in bunches.
Johnson is not a perfect defender at this juncture — a pedestrian 2.2 deflections / 36 minutes is unbecoming of a player with his physical tools — he’s a bit static as a help defender on the perimeter. Like many young players, Johnson often seems consciously focused on tracking the ball and his man, determined not to lose either, rather than playing instinctual, athletic defense. Ball-handlers should be terrified of a Jalen Johnson stunt or dig, not breezing past whatever these are:
This is not a fatal flaw, of course, and certainly something that should improve. Johnson also has to curtail his turnovers on the offensive end, currently at two a game., rarely the result of wayward passes but often indecision on the perimeter (e.g. traveling on the catch, getting ripped when over-dribbling.) These current worries don’t detract from Johnson’s potential; hell, they aren’t even diminishing his current production.
Jalen Johnson is far from a finished product. He’s prone to getting stuck on a screen and coughing up the rock. But at 6’8″, he runs the floor like a deer, and can contort his body into any position needed to dunk the ball, fire a pass, stick to his man, or block a shot. He’s even shooting the three this season.
Still just 21 years old, Johnson’s ceiling is far from defined, and it’s easy to get starry-eyed trying to find it. But we shouldn’t ignore what the third-year man is doing right now. In a ten-point loss against Philly, Johnson was a +3 while scoring 18 points, grabbing ten boards, blocking three shots, and dishing two assists. He didn’t turn the ball over either.
A dozen games into the season, that’s now par for the course for Johnson, and it’s why Quin Snyder had no choice but to insert him into the starting lineup as one of Atlanta’s clear-cut five best players. On some nights, he’s better than that.
Jalen Johnson is finding a role for the Atlanta Hawks, and it’s easy to see why.
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