The Atlanta Hawks are reconfiguring their roster, and their decision to sign Kevon Harris to a 10-day contract was only the beginning.
Atlanta is also converting forward Dominick Barlow’s contract into a standard deal.
“The Atlanta Hawks are converting two-way forward Dominick Barlow to a two-year standard NBA contract, his agent Todd Ramasar of Life Sports Agency told ESPN,” ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on X on March 2. “Barlow is in his third NBA season after spending the last two years in San Antonio.”
Barlow, 21, went straight from high school (prep) to the “pros”, playing with Overtime Elite in Atlanta.
He made history as the first OTE player to make it to the NBA.
“Respect to my younger self, like if you saw me now just knowing that I made a promise to myself of getting to the NBA and I stuck with it,” Barlow told The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Isabella DiAmore in an interview updated in January 2024. “Being able to stay the course while dealing with COVID, going underrecruited, and having to go through all that stuff made me stronger mentally.
“My journey is a little unique because there’s no reference point of following guys. I had to basically figure a lot of stuff out. I had a lot of people around me, but I had to do a lot of stuff on my own.”
Trae and Dom connect twice in a row pic.twitter.com/rDDAobeqdQ
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) February 13, 2025
Barlow is averaging 2.9 points and 1.6 rebounds in just under eight minutes with the Hawks this season.
Hawks reward their young players
The Hawks’ decision on Barlow follows a pattern for the front office of paying their young players somewhat early, avoiding potential bidding wars on the open market. Their efforts have included the likes of Jalen Johnson and Onyeka Okongwu in the past two seasons.
That pattern bodes well for Dyson Daniels and, further down the road, Zaccharie Risacher whose status as the No. 1 overall pick of the 2024 NBA Draft adds to his presumed security.
For Barlow, this is a chance to continue his unconventional dream journey.
The Hawks need size with Jalen Johnson out for the season. They could also explore different lineup combinations given the struggles some of their other groups have had in recent weeks and all season long.
In the small sample size of just 109 possessions, Barlow has the eighth-best net efficiency differential on the Hawks’ roster, per Cleaning The Glass.
We will see if he can improve on that standing the rest of the way.