As we continue our review of the Atlanta Hawks’ ’18-’19 roster, let’s take a look at one of the more interesting players: Justin Anderson.
Justin Anderson was acquired by the Atlanta Hawks as a part of the three-team trade that involved Carmelo Anthony, Dennis Schroder and Mike Muscala.
Outside of a 2022 protected first rounder, Justin was really the only piece the Hawks got back, since they bought out Melo soon after. Some were disappointed in the trade for this reason but still, he was a former first rounder that had played meaningful minutes for a playoff team just the season before.
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Despite that, and the fact he was joining a much less talented team, the forward struggled to get minutes in Lloyd Pierce‘s rotation, who coincidentally was on the bench in Philly with Anderson, as an assistant coach in the last two seasons.
Anderson got only 9.6 minutes per game in his first season as a Hawk, posted up on the end of the bench for the majority of the year. He did go on to start a few games and played a bigger role down the stretch overall.
Despite this, he became a bit of a fan favorite of sorts and had some games where he showed flashes of being a quality rotation piece down the road.
He’s a restricted free agent this summer, which means the Hawks will have first priority to sign him and will be able to match anyone else’s offer if they extend the qualifying offer.
We’ll see soon enough if they do just that, but for now lets go back through his first season in Atlanta, starting with the expectations he had coming into said season: