Atlanta Hawks: Ranking the 12 Best Fits in Free Agency

#7. Noah Vonleh

Noah Vonleh, who has surprisingly been in the league for five years already, broke out in a big way for the heavily tanking New York Knicks in the 2018-19 season on the way to a career year.

Vonleh seemed to turn the corner after coming into the league as a vaunted Top 10 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, tacking on huge gains in the gym – making him a fairly staunch defender while providing a swiss-army-knife role on offense.

Defense was where the Atlanta Hawks would need Vonleh’s skills the most, and it’s where his numbers perked up the most in his fifth season. Vonleh produced career-highs in steal rate (1.3%), defensive win shares (1.7) and defensive box plus/minus (+1.6) all while playing a career-high 1722 minutes on the season.

Though Vonleh mostly played at the four during the 2018-19 season (73 percent of his minutes), the four man role is capably filled by John Collins for now, so Vonleh would either have to come off the bench or serve as a small-ball five (which he played 27 percent of the time last season).

On the Atlanta Hawks, centers are expected to be able to spot up for three-pointers, which is something Vonleh showed he could capably do last season. Vonleh produced the highest three-point attempt rate of his career (31.1 percent) while hitting the triple at a 33.6 percent clip.

While not eye-popping, that number should keep the defense honest, which is all the Atlanta Hawks need of their centers in Lloyd Pierce’s modern offensive system.