The Atlanta Hawks’ dream team if they nailed every draft pick

2018. Pick #3. Actual: Luka Doncic (traded to Dallas). Should’ve Been: Luka Doncic (not traded to Dallas)
Pick #19. Actual: Kevin Huerter. Should’ve Been: Kevin Huerter

Oh boy. I don’t want to re-litigate the Dallas trade for the ten-thousandth time, but it’s unavoidable. Sorry in advance.

You don’t need this, but I’ll quickly recap. The Hawks traded the third pick to Dallas for the fifth pick and a 2019 first-rounder. Essentially, they swapped Luka Doncic for Trae Young and Cam Reddish.

Then-GM Travis Schlenk had a vision. He wanted to rebuild in the Golden State style, drafting Young to impersonate Steph Curry and using the 2019 pick on Reddish, whom he envisioned as a sweet-shooting, defensive-minded wing in the mold of Klay Thompson.

Reddish never panned out, but Trae sure did! He became the snarling, bowing, shushing face of the Hawks, leading them on a shock run to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021, where they took two games off the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks. Young was an All-NBA player in 2021-22 and is a 2x All-Star despite just finishing his fifth season. That’s a heck of a resume.

And yet, it pales in comparison to what could have been.

Luka has become an All-World player, a scythe-carrying, grinning soul-taker whose future seems replete with inevitable MVPs and championships. On paper, he has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as Trae — incredible passing vision, tough shotmaking, poor defensive effort, and an attitude that occasionally rubs teammates the wrong way.

But Doncic is a half-foot taller and significantly stronger. When the shot isn’t falling (for himself OR his teammates), he can park himself in the post and get to work. Defensively, if he applies himself, his sheer size can make him an acceptable-enough deterrent.

Young’s diminutive stature is a double whammy. He is susceptible to aggressive physicality (see: the dismal performance against Miami two playoffs ago), and even at his absolute best, will always be one of the worst defenders in the league.

This isn’t to say that Young is a bad player; he’s a great one. But Doncic’s weaknesses can be papered over in a way that Young’s can’t, and he’ll always have an advantage in that department. Doncic’s mere presence doesn’t quite make a team an automatic title contender, as this year’s Mavericks prove, but he’s a consistently dominant playoff performer who can win a series against any opponent single-handedly.

The book isn’t written on this draft yet. The Hawks very well could win a championship with Trae Young as the driving force. But it will be despite trading Luka Doncic, not because of it.

As for Huerter, the Hawks nailed this one. Regardless of whether they chose Young or Doncic, they weren’t likely to draft Jalen Brunson, another undersized point guard. Huerter is an elite shooter with enough size to compete defensively. He represents great value at pick #19 — too bad the Hawks jettisoned him to Sacramento for a future first (we’ll see), Justin Holiday (meh), and Mo Harkless (eek).