This year’s NBA trade deadline is going to be fascinating because it features a number of sellers and very few buyers. That tends to lead to a lot of rumors, a number of minor trades that mostly impact future cap space, and a few contenders making minor additions.
The problem is there are very few contenders with actual assets to go after quality talent from the teams that would be happy to sell off their best players in exchange for young players and future draft picks. The Cavaliers are the most obvious example of this, and it’s why the trade talks with the Clippers about DeAndre Jordan have stalled, but they aren’t alone.
A look around the league shows that very few of the teams you would point to as teams in need of upgrades going into the postseason have assets to move. In the West, the top contenders are fairly well capped out with few movable future assets, and most of the trades figure to involve teams fighting for the eighth seed, not the top four squads. In the East, the Celtics have assets and are reportedly in talks, but the Raptors and Wizards don’t really have much to offer teams if they were to look to upgrade at certain positions.
So for a team like the Atlanta Hawks that would like to sell off some of its veterans on longer term contracts, the list of possible trade partners isn’t very long and the possibilities of getting quality assets in return are increasingly slim. As Sean Deveney of Sporting News reports, Atlanta would love to have something of a fire sale at the deadline, but there just aren’t many wanting to buy right now.
General manager Travis Schlenk, hired last May, has put the Hawks into full-scale sell mode approaching the deadline on Thursday, with just about everyone on the roster outside of rookie John Collins up for discussion.
Alas, the Hawks’ yard sale has not been the most popular on the block — “slim pickings,” as one scout said with a laugh on Friday.
These aren’t just problems unique to the Hawks, but for a team that probably hoped when building this roster they could sell off some of their veterans at the deadline to contenders, it’s disappointing. Atlanta’s problem is partly the general environment of the NBA at this deadline, but also them having few appealing players on appealing contracts.
As Deveney goes on to note, Dewayne Dedmon is likely their most intriguing veteran piece, as the center who has expanded his range to three-point land this season could fill a bench role for a contender easily and has a friendly contract at $6 million this year with a $6.3 million player option. The Sixers, Bucks, and Thunder all have reportedly expressed some interest, but the return for Dedmon doesn’t figure to be much more than a second round pick and an expiring. The other veteran pieces the Hawks have in Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli are potential buyout candidates if they remain in Atlanta beyond the deadline, so teams aren’t willing to part ways with much to land either.
The closest thing the Hawks have to stars on the roster are Kent Bazemore and Dennis Schröder, but neither has performed quite to the level of their contracts to this point despite being intriguing younger options. The Cavs have reportedly expressed interest in Bazemore, but with the Hawks shooting guard making an average of $18.5 million over the next two seasons (he’s almost guaranteed to pick up his $19 million player option in 2019-20), its a steep price to pay for a shooting guard who isn’t an especially efficient shooter.
Schröder, meanwhile, has been dismal on the defensive end and is owed $15.5 million guaranteed in each season through 2020-21. While there is some upside to the 24-year-old from Germany, he’s now in his fifth year in the league and has yet to prove to be efficient or consistent on either end of the floor. His 19.3 points per game looks good at initial glance, but even that has come with a step back in efficiency from last year.
While Deveney reports John Collins is the lone player the Hawks won’t discuss, they remain fond of Taurean Prince and would command a high price for him and generally have little else to interest other teams. It’s an interesting time to be a team like Atlanta, without a player they can easily ship out for a first round pick like the Bulls did for Nikola Mirotic.
Thursday will provide us with an idea of how low the Hawks are willing to drop the price on some of those veteran players and even some of their younger core pieces. If 3:01 p.m. arrives and Atlanta has only moved Dedmon and maybe one of Ilyasova and Belinelli, that should come as no surprise.
