Five Guys the Hawks Have Never Met Are About to Define Them

Somewhere between the tenth podcast breakdown and the fourth group-chat argument about guard-versus-center, the Hawks draft conversation lost its characters. We've been debating what the pick means so hard we forgot to ask who these people actually are.

Eighteen days until Barclays Center. Game 2 of the Finals tips tonight. The names most likely to hear their name called at No. 8 are not abstractions. They're nineteen-year-olds with jump shots and flaws and reasons to believe they belong in Atlanta.

Kingston Flemings is the fastest player in this draft class, and not in the way people use "fast" to describe guards who push tempo. Flemings is fast the way a song changes key -- everything around him reorganizes when he accelerates. At Houston: 16.1 points, 5.2 assists, 1.5 steals, 47.6 percent shooting across 37 games. His assist-to-turnover ratio -- 5.2 to 1.8 -- tells you he processes at a different speed than his feet move. Most fast guards are fast and reckless. Flemings is fast and meticulous.

The question isn't talent. It's whether a 19-year-old point guard can do what CJ McCollum couldn't do against the Knicks in April: create in the half-court when the transition game dies. McCollum scored 26, 32, and 23 in Games 1 through 3. Then the Knicks adjusted. He scored 6 in Game 6. The system that won 46 games went quiet when it needed a voice.

Mikel Brown Jr. fills a different gap. Where Flemings is precision, Brown is force -- 18.2 points and 4.7 assists in 21 games at Louisville before a back injury shut the season down, with ten dunks from a point guard and a 39.5-inch max vertical at the combine. His 6-7.5 wingspan at 6-5 says NBA body. His back says the body hasn't been fully stress-tested. The range of outcomes is the widest in this draft: lottery steal or medical asterisk, and nobody knows which yet.

Darius Acuff Jr. is the one everybody has an opinion about before they watch the tape. Because the tape looks familiar. Arkansas. Undersized. 23.5 points per game, 6.4 assists, 44 percent from three on volume. Consensus All-American. I wrote two days ago that Acuff is Trae in different clothes. At 6-2, with the defensive limitations the scouting reports describe, he is the model the Hawks dismantled when they traded Trae Young. Most mocks have him gone before 8. If he slides, the Hawks face the night's most uncomfortable question: is the best player available also the player you already decided you didn't want to be?

Aday Mara stands 7-3 in bare feet. His standing reach -- 9-foot-9 -- is the second-highest ever measured at the combine, behind only Tacko Fall. At Michigan he blocked 103 shots in a single season, won Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, won a national championship.

Mara solves structural problems. The Hawks were near the bottom of the NBA in isolation scoring this season -- Jalen Johnson shot 34.1 percent on isolation plays at 0.73 points per possession, second-worst among players with 100-plus attempts. Mara doesn't fix isolation scoring. But he changes the geometry of everything else: rim protection, verticality, someone waiting behind Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker when they gamble on the perimeter.

The problem is shooting. Thirty percent from three. 56.4 percent from the line. In a system that ranked 3rd in fastbreak points at 18.1 per game and needs spacing to breathe, those numbers are a tourniquet. Bleacher Report's Jonathan Wasserman wrote that Mara "may have a better chance to make this team immediately tougher to play against." Tougher, yes. But the Hawks didn't lose the Knicks series at the rim. They lost because the half-court offense collapsed when McCollum got schemed out and nobody else could create.

Mara is the answer to a real question. The debate is whether it's the most urgent one.

And then there's Henri Veesaar -- 7-0, North Carolina, 17.0 points and 8.7 rebounds while shooting 42.6 percent from three. That number changes the center conversation entirely. More likely a pick-23 target than a pick-8 one, but if the Hawks decide center is the answer and spacing is non-negotiable, Veesaar is the name that makes both things possible.

Onsi Saleh sat at a podium after the lottery and said the Hawks would "draft the best available player." Best available by whose measurement? The Hawks went 46-36 and got eliminated by the Knicks in six -- led 2-1, then watched it dissolve into a 140-89 Game 6 blowout that produced an NBA record 47-point halftime deficit.

Saleh was promoted to President of Basketball Operations nine days ago. The 76ers wanted to interview him and were denied. Now his vision has to materialize at Barclays Center in 18 days.

Dex wrote Tuesday that the Hawks waited too long and are stuck with Mara by default. Maybe. But the board is genuinely uncertain -- multiple mocks still project Flemings or Brown available at 8. The ambiguity isn't a problem. It's an 18-day window where the Hawks get to decide what they want to be before the draft decides for them.

Tonight, Brunson and the Knicks play Game 2 in San Antonio, riding a 12-game playoff win streak tied for second-longest in a single postseason in league history. The team that ended the Hawks' season is trying to end everybody's. And somewhere in Atlanta, Saleh is studying film on a 19-year-old from Houston, a 19-year-old from Louisville, and a 7-3 center from Michigan, knowing that whichever name he calls on June 23 will tell the city something about itself it hasn't heard yet.

Soundtrack: Solange -- "Cranes in the Sky."