Atlanta Hawks Guarantee Contract of Jaylen Adams for Rest of Season

A quick news piece detailing the Atlanta Hawks guaranteeing Jaylen Adams for the rest of the season with the team.

After finalizing a buyout with Jeremy Lin, the Atlanta Hawks were without a backup point guard. The obvious choice here was to get Jaylen Adams, who had been on a two-way, spending most of his time in Erie.

They did just that, a day after Trae Young played 38 minutes, and the only real surprise was they didn’t do it sooner, but Lin cleared waivers today, and Adams is now officially a full-time member of the Atlanta Hawks.

He’s spent 19 games with the Erie BayHawks of the G-League, where he’s played nicely. In those 19 games (all starts), Adams has averaged 15.8 points, 6.3 assists and 4.9 rebounds. The latter being very impressive for the 6-foot-2 guard.

By nature of his previous two-way deal, he did spend some time already in the ATL, appearing in 10 games, but has taken just 7 shots and scored 13 points. He played nearly exclusively in garbage time and will now be asked to participate on a much bigger level.

Lin averaged 19.7 minutes a contest in the role that Adams will be filling, but Lloyd Pierce will probably ease him in, especially with Young looking like he can handle a larger load of minutes.

Per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the deal includes a partial guarantee for next season as well.

As the tweet above says, Adams went undrafted in the 2018 Draft, after being a 4-year starter at St. Bonaventure. During those four years, Adams amassed an impressive 3998 minutes played and was voted the A-10 Player of the year as a senior.

Adams has been inactive with the Atlanta Hawks the previous two games, dealing with an ankle injury. It doesn’t seem too serious, but the Hawks have just 1 more game until the All-Star break, so it may not be a surprise if we don’t see Adams until after that.

Regardless, Adams should get a nice chance to prove himself down the stretch, and with the 2019 Draft looking to be fairly wing-heavy, Adams has a real shot of making the team next year if he performs well.