Being selected first overall is the ultimate gift and curse.
On one hand, you’ve shined so much in your pre-NBA career that a team believes you are the premier talent in your age group. You often arrive at a downtrodden franchise heading an effort to turn things around. Fans see you as a savior and a franchise pillar, the likes of Anthony Edwards, Victor Wembanyama, and most recently Cooper Flagg.
But, if you’re unable to live up that lofty status, the four-letter B-word seeps into the conversation. That word may hound you for the rest of your career — even if you grow into a helpful role player who sticks in the league for many years.
Ask any Hawks fan what they think of former number two overall pick Marvin Williams. They won’t point to five years as a starting small forward on Atlanta playoff teams in from 2008 to 2012. They won’t point to a body of work that includes a productive 15-year NBA career.
The conversation centers on what he wasn’t. He just wasn’t either of the two All-NBA point guards that followed him on draft day back in 2005.
Enter Zaccharie Risacher, number one overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
It’s obvious he’s not having the offensive breakout everyone hoped for after closing last year’s rookie season on an absolute tear. And most recently, he’s been benched in the starting lineup for CJ McCollum (starting with yesterday’s game against the Brooklyn Nets — but possibly for the foreseeable future).
Last season, after coming back from injury from January 30th until the postseason, Risacher scored 14.9 points in just 25.7 minutes per game while shooting 52% from the field and 42% from three. You could practically see the confidence grow with every shooting explosion. The tortured fanbase could finally feel justified in the organization nailing their bet on an unconventional pick in a down draft cycle.
This season is a different story. Both his scoring impact and efficiency are down from his rookie season, and it hasn’t been offset by improvements in other ‘little areas’ of basketball.
To be clear, this isn’t the end of his NBA career nor his time with the Atlanta Hawks. But it’s undeniable that his development hasn’t gone to plan.
So, that begs the next question:
What has gone wrong so far?
This season has been a different case from his rookie season, when most rightfully expected him to take some time to adjust to the speed and physicality of the NBA game. Some of his biggest issues in my eyes in 2025-26 have been:
Not enough growth in his upper and/or core body strength
His numbers finishing at the rim and through contact most distinctly bear this out. Per databallr, Risacher is getting to the rim 9.2 times per 100 possessions, placing him in the 88th percentile in the league. But his rim finishing shooting percentage is 3.2% worse than league average.
Risacher’s passing vision is limited, and often it seems as if he predetermines when he’s going to try to get a shot at the rim regardless of the position of the defense. Jalen Johnson is in his direct line of view, but his attempt over/through two guys goes poorly:
“When we get in the lane and break the paint, having our eyes out and passing the ball out allows us to get more catch-and-shoot threes,” coach Quin Snyder had to say about his team’s process before the Nets game. “They’re obviously highly efficient shots. When we’re getting our shot blocked when going to the rim, it’s a pretty good indication that maybe there was an opportunity to get off the ball earlier.”
Or sometimes, he goes in expecting contact without the balance to finish if the expected contact doesn’t arrive:
Lack of a functional handle when faced with ball pressure
This was never a real draw to his game, though he’s at least shown he can handle the ball in the open court a bit. But in halfcourt settings especially, he has a tendency to fumble the ball at even the slightest bit of contact.
These possessions, like recently against the Minnesota Timberwolves below, are all too common. Jaden McDaniels is a premier on-ball defender in the NBA to be clear, but Risacher never looked like he had any shot to get past him to the rim here:
Shifting shot mechanics from shot to shot
In fairness, he hasn’t looked completely lost as a shooter or anything. For his NBA career, he’s shooting 36% on threes on 8.6 three-point attempts per 100 possessions. But he self-creates fewer than 5% of his three-point attempts and makes for his career and is quite clearly a streaky catch-and-shoot guy. In short, he needs a high-level creator to set him up for good looks (more on that later).
One big worry, however, is his oddly low free throw shooting percentage, a common leading indicator of true shooting talent, for example. Last season, he shot 71% from the free-throw line — just fine and no better. But this year, strangely, that number is all the way down to 60%.
I’m no biomechanics expert, but it seems to me that his shot is very upper body-dependent, and his pushy release doesn’t look particularly consistent. I think it’s something that can be ironed out with repetition, because otherwise inconsistent mechanics is something that could cap his overall shooting talent.
Not daring enough to play-make for others, movement shoot, or cut
There are a lot of ways to make yourself useful on offense without a high-level handle. You can read the floor and make quick passes upon receiving the ball. You can move and cut off the ball.
But after flashing these tools last season, Risacher hasn’t built upon this foundation.
The area I think he should tap into more is moving off ball around screens into catch-and-shoot opportunities. That’s simply a more dangerous play type than a standstill catch-and-shoot possession — you can threaten the defense into reacting to your movement even if you don’t touch the basketball.
It’s too much to ask him to be Kyle Korver or anything, but at his height and with his mobility, this should be more of a weapon in his arsenal.
His assist to turnover ratio is up from his 1:1 ratio last season, but I think he can continue to be more ambitious with his passing in coach Snyder’s ‘0.5 second’ system.
It’s a similar story with his cutting frequency. Per the NBA’s tracking numbers via Synergy, Risacher has been right at 8% of his possessions ending from a cut in each of his first two seasons. No growth from year 1 to year 2.
In short, the best way to optimize his offense is to be a jack of all trades. Someone multi-faceted — dangerous to a defense in a variety of ways.
His fit on offense was predicated upon having Trae Young as the focal point
Young is one of the best creators in the NBA. Young found Risacher often last season, and Risacher responded by shooting 38% from three when sharing the court with him (including a small sample this season). Trae Young is now in D.C., and while Jalen Johnson has assumed responsibility as the head of the offense, his ability to find Risacher can’t quite compare.
It’s possible that next season, they Hawks bring in another high-level playmaker to team with Johnson and Dyson Daniels — either via draft or free agency — and that acquisition could be a boon to Risacher’s offense. But in the meanwhile, he’ll need to find other ways to impact the game.
Risacher was never going to be a typical high draft pick. Almost all of those players historically have on-ball creation skills to build an offense around. Zaccharie’s skillset always lent himself to being a glue guy — someone whose offensive values comes from being set up by others, whether as a catch-and-shoot guy or off screening or off cutting.
There are also two angles to this conversation: the foresight angle and the hindsight angle.
Throughout the draft evaluation process, there was no real consensus in a draft class that was light on talent as compared to other drafts. We here at Peachtree Hoops still never felt as through Risacher was the guy even despite this, due to concerns with his low ceiling, rawness, and the opportunity cost to add a two-way center at a position of need.
Even in hindsight, though, things have clearly gone a good bit worse than envisioned. The trio of AlexSarr, Stephon Castle, and Donovan Clingan, for example, have flashed levels of productivity Risacher hasn’t (with Reed Sheppard, a.k.a. the Mahomesian prospect, in that conversation as well).
But that decision was made almost two years ago at this point. It is what it is.
So now what?
I’d be remiss to not mention that there are areas in which Risacher has shown clear improvement. His defensive impact is very apparent on a team lacking size at the small forward position. He’s a legitimate disrupter defending both on and off the ball, averaging more steals and blocks (2.8 ‘stocks’ per 100 possessions) than in his rookie season.
Risacher injects energy in the fight for rebounds (a big weakness on this squad). His assists per 100 possessions are up while his turnovers per 100 possessions are down. His +/- impact is there. I promise you, it hasn’t all been bad.
But when his offense is just barely functional to this point, that hangup remains an anchor on any other value that he provides.
I still believe he can be a very helpful and impactful role player, but it’s time to stop envisioning Risacher as a foundational player to the franchise.
Not only does he require a significant amount of continued development just to reach the point where he can be a starting wing on a competitive team, there has been nothing to suggest that his ceiling is any higher than that.
Additionally, a different front office head than the current one ultimately spearheaded that pick. The current general manager, Onsi Saleh, has less incentive to force a square peg into a round hole.
“[The starting lineup change] doesn’t reflect in any way my personal belief in Zacch,” coach Snyder had to say after the Nets win on Sunday. “It actually could be a positive for him to be in the game at a different stage. Different matchups with guys. I think that was the case [today]. He looks relaxed. He competed. Zacch’s about all the right stuff. His development is something that’s going to continue to happen whether he’s starting or coming off the bench.”
Again, I still think the 20-year-old still has a productive NBA career ahead of him, but in my opinion the Hawks should continue to develop him while also regarding him as no more than a rotational wing signed to a mid-value contract over the next two future seasons — that is, assuming his fourth-year team option is picked up.
The story of his career is still being written, and I would implore you to not write off someone who doesn’t even turn 21 for a couple of months. But it’s not too early to adjust expectations accordingly — a process both the franchise and the fanbase may have already kicked off.