25 in 25: No. 6 Jeff Teague

SB Nation

This is a series that looks at the best Atlanta Hawks of the past 25 seasons dating back to the 2000-01 season. No. 7 Kyle Korver can be found here.

You thought I had forgotten about this series, huh? Well,

that’s where you’re wrong — it’s back.

Jeff Teague may be known by Generation Z for being a part of the funniest basketball podcast out there, but despite his self-deprecating humor, back in the day he could no doubt hoop.

The Indiana native Teague was drafted by the Hawks with the 19th overall pick of the 2009 NBA Draft after two years at Wake Forest. At 6-foot-2 with a lightning quick first step, Jeff Teague was a downhill, score-first point guard with a deep bag of moves to finish in the paint.

The backdrop is that the Hawks had established veteran point guard Mike Bibby — and that very offseason they also acquired sixth man extraordinaire Jamal Crawford. Additionally, he was drafted to a team on the rise after breaking a nine-season playoff drought. So, it was immediately clear that he’d have to fight for minutes on a competing team.

The first two years of his Hawks career were largely just deep bench contributions as expected with so many guards ahead of him on the depth chart. But when his number was unexpectedly called in a big moment, he stepped onto the stage, and in the process, he let all Hawks fans know who he really was.

During the 2010-11 season, the Hawks traded Bibby as part of a package that netted Kirk Hinrich, a more defensive-minded guard to shore up the perimeter. The Hawks managed 44 wins that regular season, but in the process of upsetting the fourth-seeded Orlando Magic in the first round, they lost Hinrich to a hamstring injury.

In order to preserve Crawford’s role coming off the bench, Teague was promoted to the starting role for the next series against the top-seeded Chicago Bulls despite averaging just 13.8 minutes per game that regular season.

With reigning MVP Derrick Rose on the other side, Teague averaged 14.8 points and 4.2 assists to just 1.2 turnovers in 38.2 minutes per game while shooting 54% from the floor and 84% from the line across the six-game series.

(fair warning — R-rated language below and in all clips that follow):

From there, he never looked back, starting 373 games over the next five seasons for the Hawks. Ultimately, he spanned two different iterations of Hawks teams that make it past to the second round in the playoffs.

Over the years, he grew into more of an off-ball three-point shooter to better compliment the team, willing passer and pick-and-roll operator, and team defender — even if limited physically on that end.

Just like the previous member of this list, his high-water achievement came during the 2014-15 season — you know, the 60-win season. That year, Teague averaged 15.9 points and 7.0 assists per game and shot 46/34/84 (57% true shooting, six percent better than league average) on the traditional shooting split.

As part of the team’s collective success, Teague was both named the January Player of the Month (along with the rest of the starting lineup) for the 17-0 run that month and was named an All-Star for the only time in his career.

However, by the end of a 2015-16 season where the Hawks won 12 games fewer than the previous season and were swept in the second round, the organization decided to turn the reins over to Dennis Schröder, whom the Hawks had drafted back in 2013. In the 2016 offseason, Teague was shipped to his hometown Indiana Pacers for a pick that became Taurean Prince.

But that wasn’t the end of Teague’s career with the Hawks. After a number of productive seasons with the Pacers and Timberwolves, Teague was traded back to Atlanta at the trade deadline of the 2019-20 season. At this point in his career, he was no longer a starting caliber player, and with the team rebuilding around Trae Young, his presence was largely to help mentor the young guard.

Overall, Teague appeared in 543 games for Atlanta across two different stints from 2009 to 2020, putting him 16th in franchise history in that category. He’s also currently sixth in assists with 2771 and seventh in steals with 632 in the franchise career leaderboard.

But his new calling as a hilarious storyteller with his longtime friends on the 520 Club Podcast might have earned him more fame than his playing career. There was the incredible recounting — alongside Josh Smith — of the saga of former Hawks head coach Mike Woodson’s burnt off eyebrows:

Or the time when his rookie hazing included a buttery and salty substance taking over the inside of his car:

Even years after his retirement from basketball, Jeff Teague jerseys fly off the shelves — although, truthfully, that’s likely because of #TeagueTime more than anything else.

Finally, I leave you with 10 minutes of beautiful on-court basketball chemistry with Kyle Korver: