ATLANTA — There’s no other team Jeff Teague wanted to start his NBA career against.

The only thing better would have been to face his hometown team in his hometown, at Conseco Fieldhouse, with his close friends cheering him on.

Teague, a former Pike High School standout, made his debut with the Atlanta Hawks against the Indiana Pacers at Philips Arena on Wednesday. Teague scored five points, and had four assists and three rebounds in 14 minutes.

“It’s exciting to be in the NBA, but to actually play against the Pacers, a team I watched growing up, makes it even more special,” said Teague, whose parents were expected to attend the game.

Teague, who helped Wake Forest reach No. 1 with upsets of Duke and North Carolina last season, was drafted 19th overall in the June draft.

He became the eighth Indianapolis-area player currently in the NBA.

Teague won’t average the nearly 19 points, 3.5 assists and 1.9 steals a game he did during his sophomore season at Wake Forest. He is the lone rookie on a Hawks roster loaded with veterans and coming off an appearance in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

“I know he’s going to play some for us,” Hawks coach and fellow Indianapolis native Mike Woodson said. “How many minutes, I can’t tell you that. When is he going to go into the game? I can’t tell you that, either. But the bottom line is, and I’ve told him this, he has to be ready.”

The plus to being surrounded by veterans is that Teague can look in any direction in the locker room and find somebody to answer his questions.

Teague already has latched on with veteran guards Mike Bibby and Jamal Crawford.

“He’s very open and always wants to learn,” Crawford said. “You want to see somebody like that be successful because he wants to get better. He wants to ask questions. Some guys come in and live off their college hype. That’s not Jeff. Jeff wants to get better.”

Teague impressed his teammates with his speed, athleticism and ability to get to the basket during informal summer workouts. Bibby requires Teague to arrive at practice early and stay late with him when he decides to get in extra work.

“You can look at kids when they come in and see that they’re not developed, but he looks developed,” Bibby said. “He knows how to put the ball in the basket. When you have that type of confidence in this league, you’re going to be fine.”

Teague, 21, averaged 12.1 points and 4.3 rebounds in 27 minutes in the preseason. He put up those numbers despite shooting 1-of-11 on 3-pointers.

He had his wake-up moment in the preseason finale, when he went 0-of-15 from the field and scored only two points in 26 minutes. Woodson, noticing his rookie was discouraged, told Teague not to worry about it because he’ll have games like that occasionally.

“I thought he had an excellent exhibition up until the last game, when he just couldn’t make a shot,” Woodson said. “That’s a part of it. I think eventually as he continues to stay in the weight room and put time out on the floor, listen to his teammates and just kind of go around the league, I think he’s going to be fine. I think he’s going to be a player in this league for a long time.”

NBA debuts

Pike’s Jeff Teague made his NBA debut Wednesday night with the Atlanta Hawks. Here’s how Indianapolis’ other seven NBA players fared in their first career game:

[chart]
|Player|High school|Current team|Year|Pts.|
|George Hill|Broad Ripple|San Antonio|2008|11|
|Eric Gordon|North Central|L.A. Clippers|2008|2|
|Mike Conley|Lawrence North|Memphis|2007|2|
|Courtney Lee|Pike|New Jersey|2008|2|
|Rodney Carney|Northwest|Philadelphia|2006|2|
|Josh McRoberts|Carmel|Pacers|2007|0|
|Greg Oden|Lawrence North|Portland|2008|0|
[end chart]