The Atlanta Hawks pulled off the trade of the offseason so far when they sent some draft capital and Danilo Gallinari to the San Antonio Spurs. In return, they got the player they were chasing, Dejounte Murray who is going to have a massive impact on the team.
However, they also got another piece of their puzzle in the trade as well. With everyone understandably shouting from the rooftops about getting Murray, it is very easy to miss that the Hawks also got second-year big man Jock Landale.
The Australian big man worked really hard to get into the league last season, and we even looked at whether the Hawks should have signed Landale before the Spurs secured his signature prior to last season. The Aussie played 54 games, starting one of them, and had a typical Spurs rookie season.
The Atlanta Hawks will benefit from Jock Landale being included in this trade.
The first benefit that the Hawks will see from Landale in this deal is that he has a season left on his contract which is only worth $1.5 million. This is going to be crucial for the Hawks this season as they have very little wiggle room with their salary cap situation.
As far as court time though, Landale is going to have to work pretty hard to make the floor during the regular season. However, the Hawks have to replace the 25.3 minutes per game that Gallinari played for the team last season.
There is a good chance that Jalen Johnson will take some of these minutes depending on how the coaching staff has seen the sophomore develop over the offseason. Landale on the other hand has shown that he has the potential to be a solid bench stretch-five in the league during his time with the Spurs.
The Hawks can move along from the failed Gorgui Dieng experiment. They signed the big man on a one-year deal last offseason and he was not a good fit for the franchise. The word on the ground is that Landale will take the Dieng third-string backup role but he has a good chance of working his way into the rotation throughout the season.