30 teams in 30 days: Atlanta Hawks offseason preview

30 teams in 30 days is a series to get you ready for the NBA offseason — a quick preview of each team’s free agent and salary cap ramifications to help set the table for their summer.

The Atlanta Hawks are at yet another crossroads: do they pay their aging franchise star and hamstring themselves financially for the final two or three years of Paul Millsap’s max contract, or let him walk for no return, just one year after they played hardball with Al Horford and he left for Boston? How much is ownership willing to pay for a middling playoff team a relatively high floor, but no real chance at a championship? Are they willing to pay the tax for 45 wins and a hard-fought first-round playoff series?

Atlanta’s new-look front office, led by former Warriors executive Travis Schlenk, will have to navigate as many as seven free agents and three draft picks less than two months after taking charge of the team. Schlenk will have the help of Mike Budenholzer, who stepped down from his role as Presdient of Basketball Operations to focus on coaching, and Wes Wilcox, who was replaced by Schlenk as general manager but remains in the fold as an advisor, though it’s possible that Wilcox will be hired by another team before the draft and free agency kicks off.

Here’s where Atlanta stands going into this pivotal summer:

Millsap and Tim Hardaway Jr. are the highest-profile free agents for the Hawks this summer. Millsap will command a max-level contract starting at $35.3 million in 2017-18 but will be 37 at the end of the full five-year max contract that only Atlanta can offer. Do the Hawks want Millsap on their books for more than $46.6 million in the final year of that contract? His defensive instincts and passing ability should stay with him as he ages into his mid-thirties, but undersized big men typically aren’t able to keep up superstar-level play at that age. Will the Hawks get enough value in the first two years of that contract to make it worth the final three? There’s no clear answer; ownership and management will have to come together and decide what they value.

Hardaway is a restricted free agent, so the Hawks will be able to wait out his market and see what another team offers before opting to match that contract or let him walk. Hardaway has blossomed over the past season and a half, but Hawks University churns out wings like no other team in the league. He’s evolved defensively into being merely bad rather than downright unplayable, but there’s still quite a long way to go before he’d be a quality starting wing on that end. If Hardaway signs a larger offer sheet, would the team rather gamble on their ability to find and develop young wings or pay for the one they already have? This is the same argument as last summer, when the Hawks gave Kent Bazemore $72 million over four years; the Hawks are a wing factory and unless they find a true superstar, it would be more prudent to allocate resources elsewhere.

Another problem arises if the Hawks were to pay the max for Millsap and match on a $10-12 million offer on Hardaway: they could run into the tax with all the salary they already have on the books.

This scenario puts them at $114 million in salary, just about $7 million short of the luxury tax, with just nine players on the roster. Throw in their first round draft pick (No. 19 overall) and five minimum contracts to fill out the fifteen spots on their roster and the Hawks are already looking at a small tax bill. Therefore, it seems almost impossible that Atlanta will max out Millsap and match on Hardaway, unless ownership is absolutely adamant about paying the tax for a non-contender.

The Hawks can’t get under the cap if they’re going to max out Millsap, but if they were to let him walk, his $30.1 million cap hold comes off their books, giving them a lot more wiggle room in free agency. Renouncing all of their current free agents (Millsap, Hardaway, Ersan Ilyasova, Thabo Sefolosha, Kris Humphries, Mike Muscala, and Jose Calderon) gives them more than $32 million in cap space, enough to get in the Blake Griffin and Gordon Hayward sweepstakes, not that either of those guys would be likely to heavily consider Atlanta as a destination without Millsap in the fold. Still, spreading that $32 million across two key contributors and a few flyers, especially on the wing, where they can turn another team’s trash into treasure, might be a better move than retaining most of last year’s team.

Of their non-marquee free agents, Muscala should be the focus of the team’s efforts. He’s a solid backup center who can defend the rim adequately, spaces the floor well enough for a backup big, and most importantly, moves the ball in the way that harkens back to the 2015 Hawks that lit the league on fire. Muscala isn’t a starter on a good team; he can play a malleable style and would fit in as a backup center in Atlanta or almost any other team in the league.

Next: 30 teams in 30 days: Indiana Pacers offseason preview

The Hawks have some flexibility that hinges on what they decide to offer to Millsap and will have to balance a large number of free agents and multiple paths they can choose. A complete teardown seems unlikely, given the goals of ownership, but the opportunity is there if Millsap walks and they can find adequate returns for Howard and Bazemore. A massive contract for Millsap will almost certainly be an albatross after year two or three, but every indication from the Hawks is that they’re willing to bite that bullet and give it to him.