Jeff Teague, Dennis Schröder, Dr. Jekyll, And Mr. Hyde

The Atlanta Hawks' point guard is disciplined. He knows what he can do, and in the broad scheme of things he has a distinct awareness of what his team needs from him. He is a cog in what has been, at times, the most efficient machine in the NBA. He picks his spots, trusts in the system and the coach who implemented it, and understands that his stability is the key to making it all work. He has the keys to a Ferrari, and he keeps his hands at ten and two on the wheel.

Also, the Atlanta Hawks' point guard is cocky and assertive in the extreme. He is not part of a bigger system; his teammates are simply accessories in his plan to undress a defense. The enormity of the moment is all. It's not necessarily that he is unaware of the potential detriment this approach might have to his team's outcome. He just thinks he's good enough to pull it off.

The Atlanta Hawks have had two point guards with two very different personalities this season. Until recently, it has worked quite well.

Jeff Teague, the Hawks' starter, is an immensely talented point guard; he can shoot, pass, and finish near the basket better than most of his NBA peers. His job, though, has been to showcase those skills within his team's broader system. When Mike Budenholzer took over the Hawks before last season and implemented his Spurs-ian approach, Teague firmly believed it wouldn't work. Why would his new coach want him doing any less than he could, especially when the team had just signed him to a $32 million extension?

Coach Bud, a former Popovich disciple, asked Teague if he had ever watched the Spurs play. Obviously he had, although he'd never studied them at a level deeper than that. The more he studied, the more he believed, and Teague bought in. Not coincidentally, he also made his first All-Star appearance this season.

During the regular season, the Hawks had arguably the best starting lineup in the NBA, and were the league's foremost example of a sum greater than its parts. All five of them could shoot and their offense flowed off unconscious, utterly unselfish ball movement. Teague initiates through screens by Al Horford and Paul Millsap, keenly aware that Kyle Korver was running off a screen on the other side of the floor and was two passes away from an open three. Defenses didn't just have to respect Teague's best moves, they had to respect all four of his teammates' best skills. On every play. No team in the Eastern Conference won more games.

Dennis Schröder has played two years in the NBA, both under Budenholzer. Given how often his instincts often win out, it would be hard to know it. Dirk Nowitzki came to the NBA from Germany fighting the unfair label that he was soft or afraid of the moment; it took him 13 years and a Finals MVP to shed those suspicions. Schröder, from Braunschweig, Germany, will never be accused of such faintheartedness.

At 6'1 with a 6'8 wingspan, Schröder has the quickness, shot, and playmaking ability to be a top tier point guard; he doesn't back down from any match-up, and does not seem as if he'd even know how to do so. When Paul Pierce defeated Atlanta in Game 3 with a buzzer beater, Schröder called it a "lucky shot," showing no regard for Pierce's resume. When the Hawks beat the Wizards in Game 5, he tweeted this picture out:

We competed our Tails off .. We did it together as a team … we #TrueToAtlanta !!! Big S/O to our fans pic.twitter.com/qGbxHaabfD
— Dennis Schröder (@DennisMike93) May 14, 2015

Because fuck John Wall, apparently. This is how he does.

It's not that Schröder circumvents Budenholzer's system completely, but when he sees a matchup he likes—which is often—the iso-ball jumps up out of him. "Trust me, I got this" is not Hawks basketball, but Schröder made it work this year.

The Hawks need both of these seemingly clashing styles to succeed. Teague is an extension of Budenholzer's precision machine, but when that machine is malfunctioning or clanking along due to missing parts, Schröder offers a solution outside the system. In a Game 5 victory over Washington in the semifinals, Teague actually told Budenholzer to let Schröder finish the game over him due to his strong play. The system is flexible enough to incorporate both its exemplification and its opposite.

It worked very well, until it didn't. Schröder's early ineffectiveness in the Conference Finals against Cleveland has led Budenholzer to lose faith, and Schröder played only three minutes and 28 seconds in Atlanta's overtime loss in Game 3, losing minutes to the infrequently used Shelvin Mack. Teague, who finished with 30 points, seven assists and six rebounds, was not to blame for the loss. Neither was Mack. The Hawks were up against LeBron James at his LeBron James-iest, and those games tend to end in a very particular way.

Mack played well, and Teague was nearly transcendent as the go-to scorer, but for the Hawks to make a stand in this series—or at least make a series of it after dropping the first three games—the old formula would seem to bear revisiting. No player is more comfortable behind the wheel for this team than Teague; whether or not he will accomplish it, Schröder most certainly wants one last chance to annihilate Matthew Dellavedova

Teague is a supremely talented but ultimately mortal point guard. He just barely lacks the supernatural powers of Russ, CP3, Kyrie, Dame, or Steph, which is something he shares with every other living human. What made Teague a star is that he stopped trying to be them, and settled for a blueprint to beating them. Schröder looks at those players and naively says, "why not me?" This split personality made the Hawks a blast to watch this season, as the team whipsawed between reason and its wild-eyed opposite depending on which point guard had the wheel. For the Hawks to pull off the crazy feat of coming back against the Cavaliers—or just to finish becoming the team they abruptly became this year—they'll need both, in the balance that seemed for so long to come quite naturally.