NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS: HAWKS VS. BUCKS

June 24, 2021

Solomon Hill

Atlanta Hawks

Practice Day

Q. What's going through your head when Trae Young is putting on a performance like he did last night. I know it's nothing new for you to see him put up a lot of points, but thoughts on what he's done consistently in these playoffs.

SOLOMON HILL: Sometimes it's just about opportunity. I had that same conversation with JC [John Collins] about just winning games. You want to put yourself in positions to win games, and then from there, you give yourself opportunities to do great things. We've put our best foot forward, and Trae is at the head of the snake. He gets guys going. He's the reason why we play the type, the style of basketball we play, and why we play it with the energy we do.

The playoffs is a lot about matchups as well, and they're a team that likes to be in the deep drop. Jrue wants to get over the screen, so that leaves him with so much daylight. Not just him, but Kev [Huerter], Bogey [Bogdan Bogdanovic]. He's that guy when it comes to downhill attacks, getting to that floater and play making.

This is just a matchup that he was able to take advantage of in Game 1. I'm sure they're going to make a couple of adjustments. We look for him to be aggressive in every game that we play. He's been doing that since he was a kid, and he lives for the moment. We're glad we're able to put him in a position to do that.

Q. I would like to ask you what is the main difference in the team since the end of the first half of the season? And how big is the impact Coach McMillan has had?

SOLOMON HILL: The biggest difference is coaching. We're just being straight honest, and there's nothing bad or negative against Lloyd [Pierce], but everything's a relationship. Everything's a relationship, whether it's Travis [Schlenk] in the front office, ownership, all the way down to the players in the locker room. The relationship speaks volume onto the ability to play the game.

I think Jamal Crawford had said something the other day just about the belief that a coach can have in you that can change your career. Coach Mac is a guy that I have tremendous respect for. It's not to say that I don't have tremendous respect for anybody else, but we have history as well. And just knowing his pedigree, being a guy that has been in the trenches. He's been part of the NBA family for the past like 40 years consecutively.

So when you switch up things, some things click, and for us, it was our coaching situation, and Coach Mac has done a marvelous job of preparing us, breathing confidence into us.

He is not just saying believe because we're in the playoffs. He's been saying that since he took over, and that honest belief that we have in not just our ability to play the game individually, but it's a bigger belief to play the game as a team. Everybody's paid that price. Everybody comes and works hard. He puts that belief in us.

Sometimes you kind of hear it, especially for a team that hasn't found success in recent years, but to see that turnaround, to see those games early on when he took over, I think that ignited something in us to really have that confidence and to be in the situation that we're in and to feel like we're not done.

Q. And also for you, did you see anything in common between the Miami Heat last season and this season playing for the Hawks?

SOLOMON HILL: Yeah, one of the biggest comparisons is that underdog mentality. You know, we don't need anybody. I look at -- it's nothing against anybody on this call, but the media is its own sport in a sense, where you have the people that are watching, whether it's ESPN or TNT. That's its own sport in its own. Then we have our own game. We play the game basketball, and we play for one another, and we don't really care about the outside noise or whatever is going on.

It was the same thing in Miami. We didn't care what people thought about us. Spo didn't care. Excuse my language. He didn't give two [expletive] about what somebody else said about how he prepared for the game or how he was going into the game or the guys that he had on his team.

I just try to bring that same mentality into the locker room of we can do this. I don't care if everybody said we're going to win this series. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't mean that we go out and play harder because everybody says it. We really don't care.

That was one thing that was huge about Miami. The belief in ourselves was greater than anybody else's belief in us. There was nobody that wanted to win it more than the guys in the locker room. It showed with sacrifices, it showed with hard work, it showed with the hustle mentality that we had, and that's the same thing showing up here.

You've got Bogey going out there and playing tremendous defense. Talking about a guy that in our first series was able to get hot and make big shots. For him to make a sacrifice and Kev to get hot offensively and for Kev to feel comfortable taking on that role, it speaks a lot about Bogey's mentality and his unselfishness, and everybody else just follows suit.

You talk about John Collins being able to go out there and just make plays without the ball in his hands. Those are the things that made the team that I was with last year great. It was the fact that we were an unselfish group and we all were focused in on the one goal. It's the same goal now. We want to win basketball games however we do.

Q. When you see Trae do the shimmy before the shot, are you like no, no, no, yeah.

SOLOMON HILL: The one thing I love about Coach Mac is he's put him in a position to just be him. I think early on when you're losing some games, I just watched Trae's AAU tape a couple days ago. He's been the same guy. From him to JC, all those guys have been the same guy, and you want him to be him. You want him to have the full confidence in his ability to play the game because that's how he has nights like that. If anything, he's probably pissed that he didn't have more.

I think he probably had four possessions in the fourth quarter where he settled for some long threes, and he's thinking to himself he could have really got to it. He could have really pushed past 50-point margin and put pressure on the Milwaukee Bucks to change it up. He's a gifted scorer. He's always been a gifted scorer at every level he's played at, he's shown a tremendous ability to score the basketball, whether they change rules or not.

That's huge. That's a huge respect thing that he's getting, the fact that before the season's even over and one of his more successful years, that the NBA is already ready to change some rules.

Shimmy your little heart out. In the fourth quarter, he knows what time it is. It was the changing of we don't need your shimmying in the first quarter and trying to put these death blows, but this is his stage. He's been ready for this. He's been waiting for this, and I think the whole team's excited to go out there and execute and continue to put our players on this big stage.