The Atlanta Hawks offseason has been an interesting one. It’s been fun to see the national discourse around this team change following their surprising run to the Eastern Conference Finals last season. To follow that with the homerun draft and savvy free agency they had only adds to the excitement around next season.
But as the season draws nearer, we have gotten a glimpse at what life could be like for the Hawks thanks simple to a few different decisions being made over the last few years.
Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey has gone back and re-drafted each of the last five classes based on what we know now. As you can imagine, there is a lot of movement between the actual classes and how Bailey sees them going if done today. Atlanta has not been immune to this.
Atlanta Hawks wind up with a different pair of wings in 2019 do-over
We’ve already seen the Hawks miss out on De’Andre Hunter by virtue of missing out on Taurean Prince back in 2016. In this scenario, they pass on the 6-foot-8 defender outright, opting instead for Matisse Thybulle out of Washington. Thybulle was originally taken 20th overall by the Boston Celtics before a draft-night trade sent him to the Philadelphia 76ers.
On the surface, Hunter’s — who the Chicago Bulls took with the seventh-overall pick in this exercise — numbers are better than Thybulle’s.
The Hawks forward 15.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 1.9 assists this past season, all improvements over his rookie campaign. But even then Hunter put up 12.3/4.5/1.8 while canning an even higher percentage of his triples.
Thyubulle has yet to crack 5.0 points or 2.0 rebounds in his two seasons. He also saw his offensive numbers fall across the board this past season.
But, as Bailey points out, his defense is on a historic level. Not that Hunter is a slouch.
Instead of Cam Reddish going 10th overall, Bailey sends him to the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta comes away with Cam Johnson who the Phoenix Suns originally took one spot later.
Johnson averaged 9.6 points this past season and shot 43.5 percent from downtown in the Finals. That’s probably about as good of a snapshot as you can give. His ceiling isn’t as high as Reddish’s, who averaged 11.2/4.0/1.3 but he is more consistent from outside.
What both of the hypothetical picks certainly hold over the current Hawks is health both Hunter and Reddish are coming off of seasons where they missed significant time while dealing with injuries. Hunter had two surgeries on his meniscus in less than a year. Still, the potential advantage goes to the Hawks.