The Atlanta Hawks are one of the league’s highest potential youth teams. What with Lloyd Pierce was a group of beardless without experience, with Nate McMillan it has proven to be an energetic, tough group and full of differential talent. For a player who has had to see this revolution from the infirmary, it should be a challenge to play with the team again. But Cam Reddish stood in the Eastern Conference finals against the Milwaukee Bucks as if nothing had happened. The forward performed at an incredible defensive level for someone returning from an Achilles injury, closing his participation with 21 points and six triples in his best game of the series that the Hawks lost that same day.
Despite fitting like a glove in these playoffs, Reddish knows he has to work if he doesn’t want the new rhythm acquired by his teammates to overtake him. In his short stay in the league, the player has not been able to find a consistency that makes him feel comfortable. He himself attributes it to some discomfort with the role of shooter in which Lloyd Pierce pigeonholed him. His role as a tripler caused bad shooting streaks to affect his game in general, affecting the aforementioned inconsistency.
For all this, Cam wanted to face the offseason with the idea of going back to being the player he was at Westtown School, an institute that he left behind being the second oldest prospect of 2018 only behind RJ Barret. With that in mind, the player put himself in the hands of Greg Garrett and Pooh Evans, former coaches of the teenage Reddish. All three have wanted tell your experience a The Athletic.
Cam has worked alongside them five days a week throughout the summer, trying to focus on their shooting and playmaking. The Hawks are characterized by being a team that has many players capable of throwing the ball to the ground, making their own situations and taking part in decision-making. Reddish does not want to be less, because he was already that type of generator before entering Duke. Although he knows that the first step is to solve that problem that affected his shooting streaks and confidence.
Based on this, the main objective that the technicians set themselves was to remove the fear of failure from their heads. In each workout, Cam throws thousands of shots to work on mental error management. His coaches gave Barret an example and his insistence on shooting despite not being a very skilled player in this discipline.
Reddish’s latest challenge in recent months has to do with his injury absences. Something for which you are also looking for a solution. The forward assures that he has understood that before he made too many superficial movements playing, and that he has worked to eliminate the kilometers and extra efforts. The Reddish roof for this season is anyone’s guess, but the work is done. If he finds himself, the Hawks will get the umpteenth good news in recent times.
(Cover photo by Mark Brown / Getty Images)