John Collins is one of the brighter spots, maybe the brightest, amidst the endless tapestry of black that is the Hawks’ season. He appears as a small bit of medium gray, nearly indetectible surrounded as he is by the void that consumes Atlanta. There is hope with Collins. There may be smaller amounts of hope with a few other players as well, but Collins has played well enough this year to be considered a core piece. Do they even have any other core pieces? Schroder maybe, just because they’ve invested so much in him.
Collins is doing nicely in his prototypical power forward role: dunk the ball, rebound sometimes, and that’s about it. He’s experimenting with adding some stretchiness to his game by shooting a few threes instead of the midrangers he usually takes, but it is too soon to tell if this is a permanent thing or just a doomed foray induced by the tank-like atmosphere in Atlanta.
He hit two of them tonight, which is pretty good since he’s only hit 7 all year. Add in a few other buckets (only a single dunk though which is too bad), and some free-throws, and you end up with his best scoring performance of the year. A career-high, even, but I’m not going to put that in the title when he’s very obviously going to score 30 in the final game of the season.