The Atlanta Hawks media day was a good day for the most part. There were a couple of uncomfortable moments, one with Trae Young which ended up with him walking away from the microphone. The other was with De’Andre Hunter in a back and forth which did not really need to happen.
But, before we get into that, let’s take a look at what we were always going to be asked and answered. Over the offseason, which Hunter described as awesome due to it being his first real offseason in his career, the wing just worked on his game.
He talked about the time of playing in the AEBL because Lou Williams sent him a text and got him involved. This shows the value of a veteran around the group as he is grafting knowledge onto the younger guys. It is not just about basketball, this was instilling the importance of giving back to the community. Then there was that dunk.
Atlanta Hawks star De’Andre Hunter worked on a lot over the offseason.
Hunter said that he worked on everything over the offseason. He stressed the importance of making a leap from year three to year four. When asked about how injury prone he has been, Hunter is right when he says that injuries happen. He is only going to control what he can control.
He does not have any individual goals for the season, The team getting wins is the goal and as one of the players said, individual awards tend to come to the players on teams that win more games. I mean, NBA pundits are cautious with their predictions but this team looks like it is going to win a lot of games.
Then the questions turned to the contract extension which is fair enough. It has been too quiet on the Hunter extension talks, the last thing that we heard was there was about a $20 million gap between the two parties.
There was the respectful question of if Hunter is part of the negotiations. He responded that his agent is taking care of all the details and sometimes lets him know things as required. That was where the questions should have stopped.
However, there was that one journalist who had to ask if it was close. This changed the whole mood of the interview and Hunter left the stage shortly after. The thing is, he is going to need to deal with these questions until he gets a deal done. If the deal is not done before the season starts then this is going to be a recurring question for the entire season. This is a distraction the Atlanta Hawks do not need