By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The Atlanta Hawks made the playoffs yet again, but yet again they couldn’t push their way into the Finals.

This year the killing blow came in just the first round, a step back for a team that just two years ago seemed to be changing the way great teams were put together.

However, there was a bright spot for Atlanta during their losing series against Washington, the emergence of a certain young German point guard.

Now that the dust has settled for the Hawks, we can look back with some perspective on one of the most divisive decisions the Hawks made last year; trusting the ball to young Dennis Schröder over veteran Jeff Teague. It was a common (and fair) question during the season, but Schröder’s performance against the Wizards this year answers that query with a definitive yes.

The Hawks didn’t take the series, obviously, but Schröder went up against Washington’s John Wall and went tit for tat until Wall exploded in the clinching game six.

He averaged 24.4 points through the first five games along with 7.2 assists and a 43.8 percent shooting rate from three-point range. It’s only five games, but Schröder stepped up when it mattered the most and made the Wizards sweat when nobody thought they would need to.

Schröder showed off an explosive first step to push through the perimeter, and his aggressiveness in the paint led to bigger and better offense, not just from him but from the rest of the Hawks too. He also drew more fouls with that approach.

His evolution into a shooter that can deliver from all over the court presented a real problem for defenders who couldn’t decide whether to play up and let him dash past them or play back and let him attempt open threes; neither strategy was effective.

He can pull-up in transition for threes and mixed-up when he goes all the way to the rack and when he stops and pops from mid-range. Diversifying his attack in such a way kept defenders guessing and made him much more difficult to shut down.

Schröder still isn’t an amazing play-maker, but he’s gotten much better. He established nice chemistry with the Hawks bigs and was able to take advantage of the attention he drew on drives to the hole for nice dishes and easy buckets.

That being said he still doesn’t quite see the floor the way elite point guards do. Some of that will come with experience, but given his scoring prowess it’s certainly not a major negative if he never quite reaches that level.

Like a lot of young players he’s still foul prone. It’s not just that he fouls, he commits silly fouls. Again, experience and reps should help in time. He has all the physical tools to be an incredible defender.

It’s reasonable to speculate whether the player we’ve seen in this series is the one we’ll see going forward, but he’s still only 23 with plenty of room to grow.

It’s a sentiment repeated ad nauseam, but point guard really is the most difficult position to play in the NBA. The nuances, reads and leadership involved can be incredibly overwhelming.

At the very least Schröder has established himself as a big time player when the games matter most. His emergence, along with that of rookie Taurean Prince, has breathed new life into a Hawks future.