Bleacher Report proposed the Atlanta Hawks trade Clint Capela for Terry Rozier. Who says no?
These days, there’s not much for the eight NBA teams not invited to Orlando to do. Outside of draft and free agency predictions (both of which are still five months away), there isn’t much for Atlanta Hawks fans to read.
Enter mock trades. Although popular, mock trade articles usually don’t go over great because everyone has a different idea of what certain players and picks are worth. It’s hard to be an NBA GM and these pieces are why you don’t see basketball writers leaving their laptops to join a front office.
Our friends over at Bleacher Report were kind enough to write a whole article about the eight teams not making the trip to Disney, publishing a piece over the weekend called, “Offseason Trade Ideas for Every NBA Team Not Invited to Orlando.”
The piece, as the title makes clear, involved each non-bubble team making a deal. It was a fun read, although some of the trades were more realistic than others.
The proposed trade for the Atlanta Hawks was: Clint Capela for Terry Rozier and a second-round pick.
The main reasoning in the article for the Hawks trading Capela is money, as the Hawks’ books are undeniably barren right now, making it hard to pull trades off.
The writer proposes making John Collins a full-time center, a position he played sparingly this season in small-ball lineups. He doesn’t specify if, in this scenario, Terry Rozier would play alongside Trae Young or work as a sixth man, but he details how Rozier’s defense would help offset Young’s, so let’s assume we’re sliding Trae to the two-guard.
Assuming Kevin Huerter starts at the three and De’Andre Hunter at the four, that would make one of the smallest starting lineups in the league. Trae and Rozier both sit at 6-foot-1, with Hunter (6’7) and Collins (6’9) making up a truly small-ball frontcourt.
If this were to happen in real life, the Hawks would be tied to Rozier until the summer of 2022, which can be seen as a positive or a negative. His deal, while not cheap at around $18 million per year, isn’t bank-breaking either.
While “Scary Terry” wasn’t as an elite of player he showed flashes of being as a Celtic, Rozier still put up respectable numbers in his first season in Charlotte. He averaged 18 points per game on 42 percent shooting, both of which were career-highs.
His fit with Young in the Atlanta Hawks backcourt is probably the biggest question mark surrounding this deal, which isn’t as bad as it seems on paper. You’d also have to question if Atlanta might be able to get a bit more in return for Capela on the market. Perhaps if the Hornets make that future second into a future first, things would get a bit better.
It would cause the Hawks to go all-in on small-ball and floor-spacing lineups, which the NBA is slowly towards anyways.
What do you think of this fake Atlanta Hawks trade?