The Atlanta Hawks are endlessly fascinating in NBA circles, though for different reasons than some other franchises. Aside from a stray rumbling about faint interest in Paul George, the Hawks were not connected to any future Hall of Fame players in potential trade pursuits ahead of the 2025 NBA Trade Deadline. Instead, the Hawks executed a pair of trades that sent long-time franchise stalwarts to playoff teams in exchange for what is, at first glance, a rather underwhelming return from the perspective of a non-diehard.
Ultimately, the Hawks moved on from De'Andre Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic without netting a first-round pick in return. Atlanta did acquire a pair of complicated first-round swaps from the Cleveland Cavaliers but, in reality, the Hawks' return centers on three rotation-level players and an exchange of second-round draft capital.
Why, then, did the Hawks do this? That is the central question asked by many in the city of Atlanta and, quite frankly, around the NBA in the hours after the deadline. In a broad view, Hawks general manager Landry Fields and company arguably sent out the two best players involved in either transaction, though that ignores that Bogdanovic is in the midst of what amounts to a lost season due to injuries and struggles on the floor. In contrast, Hunter is enjoying easily the best season of his six-year NBA career, averaging 19.0 points per game on strong efficiency and emerging as a legitimate candidate for the league's Sixth Man of the Year award.
Because the return focuses on solid, yet unspectacular, role players in Caris LeVert, Georges Niang, and Terance Mann, the assumption many have is that the Hawks are simply cost-cutting or, in a more drastic sense, "tanking" the season. The cost-cutting angle certainly has merit, with the Hawks clearly motivated, at least to some degree, to move Hunter's contract with two years and approximately $48 million remaining after the 2024-25 season. The tanking angle, however, does not have such merit.
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The Atlanta Hawks are still moving forward
While most teams in the NBA are some degree of "all-in" or "fully rebuilding," the Hawks are snugly in the middle. Without relegating the entirety of Atlanta's path to this place, the Hawks executed a rather disastrous transaction to acquire Dejounte Murray, sending multiple unprotected first-round picks to the San Antonio Spurs in a move that ultimately made the team worse, if anything. Atlanta did manage to pivot away from Murray at the right time, executing a brilliant transaction with the New Orleans Pelicans to acquire Dyson Daniels (who might be better than Murray already) along with two real first-round picks. In between, the Hawks won the 2024 NBA Draft Lottery and, while there was no "prize" prospect in that class, Atlanta gleefully selected Zaccharie Risacher as a key piece of the franchise's retooling effort.
In short, this is not a full-blown rebuild in Atlanta. They have no reason to tank, simply because the Spurs own the Hawks' 2025 first-round pick. Atlanta did not make any "buying" moves at this deadline or over the summer, but the team's front office also made it clear, both in actions and words, that the Hawks are trying to be competitive now. Trae Young has lifted a mismatched group of offensive players to respectability on that end of the floor and, very quietly, Atlanta is enjoying its best defensive season in several years.
That brings us back to the 2025 NBA Trade Deadline, where the Hawks sent two respected veterans away, only to garner three respected veterans and perhaps a slight upgrade in secondary draft capital. Are the Hawks better right now than they were on Wednesday? Maybe not, but also ... maybe. Hunter is the best player that moved in any transaction, which makes the case more difficult, but if one assumes the status quo from 2024-25 Bogdanovic, it would be an easier sell. Candidly, Bogdanovic should improve from his shaky season to date, but the Hawks needed depth in the wake of a season-ending injury to Jalen Johnson, and they snagged that depth on Thursday.
The glass ceiling for the Hawks is likely a play-in berth this season, and that writing was on the wall the moment that Johnson was diagnosed with a torn labrum. However, head coach Quin Snyder does have pieces now to maintain respectability and, rather than bottoming out in a way that some other teams in a play-in position might, Atlanta understood its situation, without any draft-related incentive to do so, and pivoted to a series of nuanced, yet understandable moves.
One can make the case that the Hawks are "shorting" De'Andre Hunter, taking advantage of his uptick in production this season to trade a player they were simply unable to move without attaching draft capital over the previous 18 months. One can make the case that Bogdan Bogdanovic's time was simply up in Atlanta after a shaky season in his early 30s. One can even make the case that the Hawks are resetting their financial books for the future, which is also logical (yet frustrating) for a team that hasn't paid the luxury tax in any season under the current ownership group.
Overall, it is a mash-up of all of those incentives. Nothing about what the Hawks did ahead of the 2025 NBA Trade Deadline was easy to decipher from the outside, and that was ironically in line with all of the team's conflicting incentives when the season began. They aren't all-in. They aren't rebuilding. They are retooling. They are young and figuring things out on the fly. Remembering that Johnson's season was already over, the Hawks are in a similar place for the remainder of the 2024-25 campaign than they were earlier this week, and while they will miss Hunter and Bogdanovic, they certainly aren't tanking.