Atlanta Hawks: 5 Most Interesting Big Men in 2018-19
By Chris Guest
An outline of the Atlanta Hawks big man rotation and how it has changed from the 2017-18 season to now.
After having a fairly ill-fitting and ramshackle roster last season in the final year of Mike Budenholzer’s reign as head coach, the Atlanta Hawks have improved their rotation and upgraded it in multiple ways ahead of the 2018-19 season.
In terms of Hawks big men, there are multiple new faces who will play at either the four or five next year for the Hawks. We’ve outlined the most interesting of those players in order of least interesting to most interesting.
Let’s get the list started with…
#5 – Miles Plumlee
When the Hawks made the Dwight Howard trade, the Hornets forced the immense contract of Miles Plumlee on Atlanta, which, in hindsight, should probably have been a dealbreaker.
Sure, Dwight was tearing the locker room apart and had publicly called out then-Atlanta Hawks head coach Mike Budenholzer for benching him in crunch time of playoff games, but the Miles Plumlee deal goes on longer and is still for big money.
Plumlee shockingly saw action in 55 games for the Hawks last season, mostly when the entirety of Atlanta’s big man rotation was injured save for Plumlee and Tyler Cavanaugh (last year was a dark time).
Under very few circumstances should Plumlee play more than 15 games next season – only entering the fray in the most lopsided stretches of garbage time. The Atlanta Hawks simply have far more interesting and entertaining younger options to employ that need to hone their development.
As such, Plumlee was the clear choice to start this list as the least interesting player in the Atlanta Hawks big man rotation.