Atlanta Hawks: Who Is a Free Agent This Offseason?
By Chris Guest
Dewayne Dedmon
One of the best players on the Atlanta Hawks this year was center Dewayne Dedmon. As one of two true seven-footers on the roster, Dedmon was the team’s starting center for the majority of the year.
After signing a 2-year/$14 million deal with the Hawks in the summer of 2017, Dedmon came in as more a backup big man, but he immediately vaulted himself into the starting spot.
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This season, Dedmon posted career-highs in a variety of categories. First off, he shot a career-best 38.2 percent from beyond the three-point line on a career-high 217 attempts. After attempting only 1 career three-pointer in his first 4 seasons combined, Dedmon has piled up 358 attempts from downtown in his Atlanta Hawks tenure.
Dedmon put up new career-highs in minutes per game (25.1), games started (52), steals per game (1.1), blocks per game (1.1) and points per game (10.8). Where Dedmon really shone was on defense, where he put forth a 2.02 real plus/minus, which was a Top-20 RPM season among centers per ESPN’s RPM metric. BBall Index featured Dedmon as the best defender on the Atlanta Hawks per its defensive player impact plus/minus metric with a 1.2 DPIPM. No other Hawk was over 0.8.
Dedmon showed that he can be an impact player for this Atlanta Hawks team, and it was also clear that he enjoyed playing alongside a generational passer in Trae Young.
However, health has been a concern for Dedmon during his Hawks’ career, as he missed an entire month last year due to a lower-body injury, which kept Dedmon out to end this season as well.
DD is an unrestricted free agent this offseason, and he will likely have a fairly strong market as a high-impact bench big man. Will the Atlanta Hawks be able to pay him enough to keep him on? Would they want to do in the hopes that he plays less minutes as a bench starter? Only time will tell.
Even if Dedmon does go elsewhere this offseason, his time in Atlanta was a major success, and he was a lot of fun to watch in his two seasons with the team.