10 Players the Atlanta Hawks held onto for too long

Speedy Claxton

Speedy Claxton missed his rookie season with knee issues and only played over 65 games twice in his career. Despite this, he did manage to win a championship with the 2003 Spurs playing nearly as many playoff games (24) as regular season games (30) that year.

However, hoping he could be useful off the bench, the Hawks signed him in 2006 free agency. This proved a poor decision as Claxton was only able to play 42 games in the 2006-2007 season, and missed the entire following season due to injury. He came back for two games the next year but was traded to the Golden State Warriors with Acie Law for Jamal Crawford. He unfortunately never even played for Golden State and retired after the 2010 season. His career only lasted seven seasons in which he actually played.

The contract Atlanta signed him to wasn’t huge by any means but it was probably telling that they should have avoided him given his injury history. At 5’11”, he wasn’t going to age well and at that size needed athleticism to be effective.

Still, the fact that he was traded for Crawford was a decent deal, he just probably should have been avoided by the Hawks in general.