The Hawks made their first two significant moves of the offseason on Sunday, bringing back CJ McCollum on a one-year deal and trading for Aaron Wiggins. The roster already looks deeper than it did when the season ended a couple of months ago, and more moves are on the horizon.
Picking up Jonathan Kuminga‘s $24 million option for next season is a no-brainer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be on the roster come opening night. His expiring contract and overall ability make him an easy candidate to facilitate a trade, and there are some murmurs of a potential swap with the Pelicans for Trey Murphy if Atlanta is willing to include the eighth overall pick — which they ironically received from New Orleans this time last year in a draft night trade.
Murphy would add a much-needed scoring punch on the wing. He’s posted back-to-back seasons averaging north of 21 points, shooting 47 percent from the field this past season and 38 percent from three. He isn’t the same caliber of superstar as Jaylen Brown, who the Hawks have also had rumored interest in, but the fact that he’s four years younger and making roughly half as much might actually make him the more desirable target. Certainly something to watch in the hours leading up to the draft.
The Hawks don’t necessarily need to make a blockbuster move between now and the start of the season, though. Onsi Saleh has been insistent on the process it takes to build a perennial contender, and Atlanta is still in the infancy stages of that — even if they’re already among the better teams in the Eastern Conference.
That might result in simply standing pat and picking eighth overall. If that’s the route they take, they could land whichever point guard falls to them out of Keaton Wagler, Mikel Brown Jr., and Kingston Flemings — or they could go the big man route, which Jake Fischer highlights in his latest piece for The Stein Line.
“Atlanta at No. 8, Golden State at No. 11, Oklahoma City at No. 12, Charlotte at No. 14 and Chicago at No. 15 have all shown varying degrees of interest in bolstering their frontcourts through the draft … fueling the belief that Aday Mara, Morez Johnson Jr. and Steinbach could all be off the board in the top half of the first round.”
Those are the two biggest roster needs in Atlanta right now, and both must be addressed before the offseason is finished. The Hawks don’t have a true point guard — at least not a starting-caliber floor general — and their lack of size up front was exposed badly in their 4-2 first-round loss to the Knicks.
That said, just because those needs exist doesn’t mean that’s the direction the Hawks will go. Saleh — like any worthwhile general manager — has maintained he’ll take the best player available, regardless of position.
For a team at this stage of building its roster, it’s really the only draft philosophy that makes sense.
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(Photo by Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire)