Hawks Notes: Risacher and France Back In Action, Porzingis Back to Form, Former Atlanta Hawk Jeremy Lin Retires

Risacher has been called upon to step up big for France, as they are without Victor Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert, Evan Fournier, and Nicolas Batum, all of whom are veterans on the team. His ability to now shoot the three-ball and score in such a short amount of time off the bench has been insane to watch. For Hawks fans, however, this should be an exciting thing to watch, as this can have significant implications on how Risacher performs with the team this season and can have an impact.

As far as the game today goes, this game will be crucial for the standings, as it will dictate the Group D standings and seeding for the knockout rounds. For France, this will prove to be a potential bounce-back game as they are coming off an upset loss to Israel, which has made things significantly high for them to secure a victory against the group leaders. Despite the absences of veterans, Risacher and the rest of the French bench have proven to be very reliable for the team moving forward, since EuroBasket began.

Group D is one of the more competitive groups, as they have Slovenia, France, Poland, and Israel competing for playoff positioning in EuroBasket. Regardless of how things may play out in EuroBasket play, Hawks fans should still be happy with the amount of progress shown by Risacher in the past month. Based on his improved skills and confidence, it will only enhance the Hawks' chances moving forward, as he has demonstrated the ability to score, pass, and defend at a high level against top talent overseas.

One of the more glaring things that has stuck out to me about France is the reluctance to start Risacher. It seems like they want to put out the least talented first and then bring in the best talent second against the opposing team's bench, which has seemed to be problematic in the last matchup with Israel. Although Risacher has excelled in this role, it would be nice to see what he and France could do if he started the game with the first unit instead of coming off the bench.

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