Should the Atlanta Hawks pass or pursue Kevin Knox for next season?

The Atlanta Hawks made a single trade during the season. They sent Cam Reddish and Solomon Hill to the New York Knicks, receiving Kevin Knox in return. At face value, it looks like the Knicks won the trade but Reddish showed that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

Knox settled into his role with the squad before he lost playing time when the Hawks’ Covid-19 crisis abated. Towards the end of the season, Knox showed how he could possibly help the Hawks when he started to microwave points in games.

In the playoffs, Knox was only able to play junk-time minutes as coach Nate McMillan preferred to use John Collins and Danilo Gallinari in the power forward role. He also chose to use Kevin Huerter, De’Andre Hunter, and Bogdan Bogdanovic in the small forward role. He used Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot at the start of the playoffs but his playing time dried up as well when the Hawks shortened their rotation.

The Atlanta Hawks could use Kevin Knox moving forward.

While Knox has not been used too much since his rookie season. The main reason for this was that Julius Randle took his playing time and the Knicks hitched their wagon to that train. Given the season that they just endured, Knox would have been happy to go to the Hawks franchise.

The Hawks have a problem next season with the way that they have the roster structured. They have only nine players locked into contracts and $144 million locked into their books if they guarantee Danilo Gallinari’s $21.5 million deal.

Given how little Knox played for the Knicks and then the Hawks, the forward is not going to garner huge amounts of interest from around the league. This means that the Hawks could offer Knox a minimum deal which could ease the pressure on the salary cap.

So, should the Hawks pass or pursue Kevin Knox? Given what he showed during junk-time minutes, he is worth extending a deal to as the 14th or 15th man in the rotation.