By any reasonable measure, the Atlanta Hawks have enjoyed at least a fairly successful 2024-25 season. For a team with a 35-37 record, that may seem surprising, but the Hawks underwent a future-facing overhaul during the summer of 2024, including a high-profile trade that sent Dejounte Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for Dyson Daniels, Larry Nance Jr., and two future first round picks.
Despite that pivot to the future, the Hawks have a better winning percentage in 2024-25 than they did in 2023-24, even with the team's second-leading scorer, Jalen Johnson, suffering a season-ending injury on Jan. 23. Atlanta's encouraging season can be traced to the steady hand of Trae Young, who leads the NBA in assists by a comfortable margin, as well as strong developmental stories around No. 1 overall pick Zaccharie Risacher and 24-year-old center Onyeka Okongwu. However, arguably the brightest spot of the campaign for Atlanta has been Daniels, who is a clear contender for two major NBA awards: Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player.
Daniels is averaging 14.0 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game this season, impressively taking on a larger offensive and rebounding workload in conjunction with his uber-elite defensive play. He is the league leader in steals (3.1 per game) and deflections by comical margins, with Daniels putting together the best season of havoc creation by a guard in more than two decades.
While his raw production of steals and deflections may not be sustainable from year-to-year, Daniels is a tremendous defender, and he has more than enough offensive talent to sustain, or even exceed, his 2024-25 production on that end of the floor. After all, Daniels just turned 22 years old earlier this month, and he is a former lottery pick with immense pedigree and an evolving skill set.
At the same time, Daniels is not the traditional 25-point scorer that might garner a rookie-scale max extension prior to his fourth season, and there could be an interesting negotiation on the horizon between player and team. Unquestionably, Daniels' market value is leaps and bounds higher than it would have projected to be a year ago, but there is also nuance in attempting to build out a reasonable projection for the summer of 2025, especially in an inflating salary cap environment.
The comparison points
Perhaps the best recent comparison for Daniels is Orlando guard Jalen Suggs. Suggs was also a lottery pick with offensive questions in his first two seasons but, like Daniels, he broke out with a tremendous third year on both ends, earning a second team All-Defense selection and producing much improved shooting efficiency. Suggs averaged 12.6 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per game, falling short of where Daniels currently is, and all signs point to Daniels having a pretty good path toward first team All-Defense honors.
While the comparison is not perfect, a lot of the signposts are similar, and Suggs garnered a five-year extension worth $150.5 million in guaranteed money. Adding another wrinkle, the salary cap is projected to jump 10 percent in 2025-26 from where it was in 2024-25, meaning that a $30 million average annual value for Daniels would actually be a discount compared to Suggs.
NBA teams likely are not building extensions with only one comparison in mind, and Daniels' representatives would almost certainly want to reference a pair of contracts handed out a year before Suggs and two years before Daniels will negotiate his new deal. In the summer of 2023, Devin Vassell (five years, $135 million) and Jaden McDaniels (five years, $131 million) signed extensions that fell short of where Suggs landed, but again, in a relatively similar range when accounting for cap inflation. Without doing a deep dive on either player, it is safe to say that Daniels' third season has been more impactful and productive than either Vassell or McDaniels, which could mark an absolute floor in negotiations.
Daniels and the Hawks can begin formal negotiations when the new league year begins this summer, though no rookie extension has to be agreed to until October. Both sides could benefit from an extension, of course, as Daniels could secure life-changing financial security, while the Hawks could angle to secure a deal with Daniels that looks to be a relative bargain only a few months after it was signed. A similar experience happened for Atlanta last summer when Jalen Johnson agreed to a five-year, $150 million deal that objectively looks fantastic from the team side, but $150 million guaranteed is $150 million guaranteed, after all.
It remains to be seen as to whether the two sides can agree and, beyond that, whether a deal would be in the range of Suggs or higher. Still, the $30 million AAV seems like at least a reasonable baseline for negotiation, and in short, $30 million isn't what it used to be in NBA circles when the salary cap is poised to be at $154.6 million for the 2025-26 season and rising from there.