After the seismic NBA news of the Kawhi Leonard trade on Wednesday, the Atlanta Hawks shook up their roster in a major way the day after.
Rumors had been swirling around starting point guard Dennis Schröder since the start of the offseason, when he deleted any and all reference to the Atlanta Hawks off of his social media accounts. Of course, social media behavior is a shallow indicator of real-life activity, but, in this case, it proved to be an omen of Schröd’s future with the Hawks franchise.
Multiple deals and trade rumors had been outlined, including here at SDS on multiple occasions, but in the end, the last rumor was the one that proved true.
The Atlanta Hawks traded Dennis Schröder to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Carmelo Anthony (who will be waived) and a 2022 lottery-protected first round pick. The Philadelphia 76ers also got involved, providing Justin Anderson to the Hawks and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot to the Thunder for Mike Muscala.
There is a lot to unpack here, but it must be said that this is the sort of move we’ve been expecting Hawks General Manager Travis Schlenk to make this entire offseason.
We thought it might happen with the Nuggets and Kenneth Faried. We thought it might happen in the Jeremy Lin trade, but instead Schlenk and Co. valued Lin’s services a lot and saw him as more than dead salary. Heck, an entire article of ours was devoted taking on bad salary in exchange for a future draft pick!
All that said, this was an excellent trade for the Hawks, as they cleaned up their cap space for future seasons and became extremely flexible going forward.
HAWKS GRADE for SCHRODER TRADE: A
On the surface and in the short-term, losing Dennis Schröder and Mike Muscala will hurt. They were two of the longest-tenured and best players on the Hawks during the 2017-18 season, and they contributed multiple impressive performances throughout the years. We’ll never forget Muscala’s game-tying deep three against the Wizards in the 2015 playoffs after the Hawks had been down by upwards of 20 points for much of the game.
Schröder, on the other hand, grew from being a scrappy and swift bench sparkplug to the team’s overqualified backup point guard to the team’s leading scorer and starting backstop in a matter of 5 seasons – not too shabby for the 17th overall pick.
But let’s look to the future. The goal of this offseason, at least in our eyes, has always been to obtain future draft picks. This deal achieves that goal.
Another goal of this offseason has been to obtain a young player who still might have untapped upside. By acquiring Justin Anderson from the Sixers, this deal achieves that goal.
A final goal of this offseason was to clean the books of any salary that might weigh the team down going forward – when cap space will be at a premium after more cap spikes down the line.
By ridding themselves of Dennis Schröder and then immediately waiving Carmelo Anthony, the Hawks will have a ton of cap space going forward, thus achieving this goal as well. How much cap space, you ask? This much:
Hawks have only $51.3 million in committed salary for the 2019-20 season, with a projected salary cap of $109 million.
— Brad Rowland (@BTRowland) July 19, 2018
Needless to say, there's some flexibility there.
So, in summary, this deal is pretty much without fault. Though losing Musky will hurt for a short while, in the long run, he did not match the Hawks’ timeframe – which is all about youth and upside. This also gives a chance for Muscala to contribute important minutes to a team with Finals aspirations in 2018-19.
Next: Hawks Projected Starting Lineup for 18-19 Season
The Hawks might not have gotten better for next season with this deal, but that was never the goal. The Hawks and GM Travis Schlenk are building for a stable and hopefully extremely promising future, and, with this deal, they completely succeeded.