With Joe Johnson no longer the centerpiece of the offense, the Atlanta Hawks have eliminated pages and pages from their playbook. The Hawks long featured Johnson in isolation situations.

“We’ve been in the past, predominately, a post-up team particularly at the 2-spot or the 3-spot with Joe,” head coach Larry Drew said recently. “We ran a lot of things through him. Now, we’ve got to change that.”

Jeff Teague said that the roster overhaul will help the Hawks be more creative and fast-paced.

“We’ll be mixing up what we do a lot more than we have in the past because I think from an overall standpoint I can run things through a number of different guys,” Drew said. “I think that should work to our advantage. It takes away the predictability about us. If we play together, if we share the basketball, I think we can be an effective team.”

Drew doesn't expect the offense to be fully installed until the regular season opener, so it is currently a simpler version.

“Sometimes simple is better,” Josh Smith said. “Sometimes I’d rather have a pizza than a Kobe steak, mashed potatoes and gravy. Sometimes you want to keep it simple where guys can get the hang of it and understand it.”