Recently, Dejounte Murray and the Atlanta Hawks have been on an absolute heater, as the team has won five out of its last six ball games and secured a spot in the NBA Play-In tournament with a home win over the Detroit Pistons. Murray has stepped up big time in the absence of star point guard Trae Young, who has been out of the Hawks‘ lineup since late February after sustaining an injury to his finger which required surgery.

The Hawks recently picked up their two most impressive wins of the whole season by knocking off the Boston Celtics, the team with the NBA's best record, not once but twice in the span of a week at State Farm Arena. In the second of the two-game set, Murray scored 44 points on an astonishing 44 shot attempts, including the game winning jumper over Jrue Holiday in overtime. Recently, the former San Antonio Spur stopped by Trae Young's From The Point podcast and shared that his former Spurs coach Gregg Popovich hilariously roasted him after that Kobe Bryant-esque stat line.

“He just texted me the other day like, you took forty f****** shots, pass the f****** ball,” said Murray, per Bleacher Report on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “That's our relationship, though.”

Murray went on to explain the immense mentorship role that Popovich played for him during his time as a member of the Spurs.

“I love that dude to death, man. Like, he was a father for me. When I would lose people, I would go in his room, and he would give me that hug. I would cry on his shoulder, I would vent to him,” said Murray. “He just was there for me, and that's not even nothing about no basketball. We're talking about real life. When I got hurt, tore my ACL and was out for a year, he squeezed me like, ‘You're going to be great. You work, you want to learn, so this is nothing.'”

A turbulent season in Atlanta

As previously mentioned, the Hawks have officially secured their spot in the NBA Play-In tournament, where they will be participants for the third straight year. The “accomplishment” signals a steady decline for a franchise that was within two games of the NBA Finals just three years ago but has since seen owner Tony Ressler's refusal to dip into the luxury tax greatly diminish the team's success.

Assuming that the Hawks don't go on a Miami Heat-esque run from the Play-In tournament all the way deep into the actual playoffs, major changes could be in order this offseason, including a potential breakup of the frustrating partnership that has been the Young-Murray backcourt pairing since it was formed in the 2022 offseason.

In any case, the Hawks now have just six more games to tune up during the regular season before the postseason gets underway. They are likely to play the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the tournament, although whether or not that will be a home or a road game is still yet to be decided.