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• #ATLANTA NBA ROSTER FREE#

The Hawks still have their entire $6.5 million taxpayer midlevel exception to use, whether it’s for one player or spread out over multiple ones.

Deandre Ayton is still out there, but that would require roster maneuvering that I don’t think the Hawks are interested in making now.

#ATLANTA NBA ROSTER FREE#

Options are limited, as most of the top free agents have already signed contracts. Looking over the roster, I think the Hawks need another wing and a third big. They could also consider bringing back Skylar Mays, who’s an unrestricted free agent, and put Martin on a two-way contract. Those two potential moves get the Hawks 14. They could also sign second-round pick Tyrese Martin to a guaranteed contract - second-round picks do not have fully guaranteed slotted salaries like first-round picks. The Hawks could use another traditional point guard in case of a serious injury to Young and/or Murray. Getting to 14 players can be as simple as signing Sharife Cooper, a restricted free agent whose qualifying offer is another two-way contract, to a standard NBA deal. They also have one more two-way player they could sign, but that’s not as pressing of a need as the two open roster spots. What next?Īs mentioned, the Hawks have 12 players on their roster they must get to 14 by the season opener, though they can have 15. Adding Murray solves a lot of issues the Hawks had this past season, but they still have work to do to climb into the East’s upper echelon. With the roster as is, I wouldn’t put the Hawks into the contender category unless a few players make significant jumps. The Murray trade was a big one, but adding the Holiday brothers and Harkless doesn’t raise the ceiling of this team much, if at all. But if there isn’t much of one in terms of impact and/or production, the Hawks will fall short of their goals. There’s a wide gap in talent between Hunter and Justin Holiday, his projected backup. If he looks no better than he did this past season, the Hawks will have a problem. If he can find the version of himself that started the 2020-21 season, it will drastically elevate this team. Hunter is the one player on the roster who could most swing this season. Griffin is 18 years old, so I wouldn’t expect much of him this year regardless of how well he plays in Las Vegas. On top of that, Johnson is recovering from a non-surgical procedure to address tendinitis in his left knee, so we won’t see what he looks like at summer league. It’s still too early to project him in 2022-23 because he played so little during his rookie season. With Danilo Gallinari gone, Johnson is slated to be the team’s backup power forward, so he’ll be in the rotation. I’ve yet to mention the Hawks’ last two first-round picks in Jalen Johnson and AJ Griffin. Having at least one of Young and Murray on the floor for all 48 minutes should ensure the offense won’t drop off as dramatically as it has in previous seasons when Young wasn’t in the game. How will coach Nate McMillan scheme the offense when Murray and Young share the floor? Murray is expected to shift to point guard when Young is on the bench, which makes him by far the Hawks’ best backup point guard since Young was drafted in 2018. Only 27 percent of Murray’s field goals were assisted last season, and he has not been a 3-point threat in any of his years in the NBA. The biggest question, though, is how effective Murray can be without the ball constantly in his hands. His running mates last year - De’Andre Hunter, Kevin Huerter and Bogdan Bogdanović - did most of their work spotting up away from the basket. The Hawks didn’t have a consistent rim threat from the perimeter outside of Young last season. The latter is especially important the threat of Murray at the basket should create additional space for everyone else. Having Murray on the floor with Young will give the Hawks a trusted scorer who can make teams pay in the midrange area and at the rim. While offense was not a concern for the Hawks in the regular season ( they ranked second in the NBA in points scored per 100 possessions), it became a glaring issue in the first round of the playoffs, when the defensive-oriented Heat eliminated Young and made everyone else try to make plays for themselves. Now, with a creator like Murray on the roster, Young has a teammate who can feed him those types of looks.

Young is lethal off the ball but hasn’t been provided many opportunities to show it over the past four seasons. We’ve already mentioned it a few times, but Hawks fans should prepare for an adjustment period for Young and Murray because both have almost exclusively played as point guards in their NBA careers.