Looking into news that Chandler Parsons and Evan Turner will no longer be apart of the team’s rotation moving forward.
Neither Evan Turner or Chandler Parsons suited up for the Atlanta Hawks loss to the Boston Celtics on Friday. That could be the trend moving forward.
The writing was on the wall, as Turner as been mixing DNP’s with low minute appearances, while Parsons hasn’t played in back to back games all year, checking in for just six games total.
Shortly before the game on Friday, Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe tweeted the below after conversing with former Celtic Evan Turner.
Evan Turner is not active tonight for the #Hawks and said the team talked to him and Chandler Parsons, who has played in six games this season, about being inactive for the foreseeable future as ATL goes with younger players. Turner is a definitely buyout candidate.
— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) January 3, 2020
There’s no reason not to believe the mentioned conversation didn’t happen, and it was notable that the two were on the end of the bench tonight, wearing street clothes.
Why does this matter?
Turner, who was acquired from Portland in the Kent Bazemore trade, has played in 18 games this season, averaging 12.8 minutes and 3.3 points in those appearances. He was slated to be the team’s back up point guard, with the team only employing one full time point: Trae Young.
The straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of Turner’s minutes, was likely Brandon Goodwin‘s breakout game.
In Trae’s absence against the Magic, two-way point Brandon Goodwin had a career-night, scoring 21 points in 21 minutes. The Hawks can’t expect that kind of play night in, night out, but he at least showed he can play the backup point role, which isn’t a huge role with Young averaging 35 minutes per game.
Obviously, the Hawks would rather give minutes to the developing Brandon Goodwin, rather than the 31-year-old vet.
As for Parsons, he was never really part of the rotation, clocking 54 minutes in total this year. Him officially moving out of the Hawks’ plan moving forward is more of a formality than a piece of news.
He does have that massive contract making him $25 million this season, and is a no-brainer in any Andre Drummond trade as the cap relief.
Turner could also be included with his good sized contract, but like the tweet above notes, is more of a buy out target.
The Hawks have bought out vets frequently since their rebuild started, with Ersan Ilyasova, Marco Belinelli and Jeremy Lin all heading to contenders through that.
If not off the team this year, neither are slated to be part of the future in Atlanta.