Former exec highlights positives of Hawks' offseason amid low future power rankings

The Atlanta Hawks’ offseason shuffling accomplished something that should appease the cap strategists. The Hawks’ finances ranked the highest for them out of all the metrics weighed in ESPN’s “future power rankings.”

How that impacts the current group – which ranked in the bottom third – remains to be seen with the Hawks undergoing a facelift this offseason.

The Hawks ranked No. 23 overall on the list.

They earned the same ranking in the Players and Management categories, an ominous sign if ever there was one for the upcoming season. However, comments from ESPN’s Bobby Marks (who spent 20 years in the Brooklyn Nets' front office) suggest that the future could be bright.

“The [Dejounte] Murray trade to New Orleans netted Atlanta two valuable first-round picks,” Marks wrote on September 24. “Despite not controlling their own first-round pick over the next three seasons as a result of acquiring Murray from San Antonio in 2022, the Hawks ranked No. 16 in draft assets. Trading Murray to New Orleans, meanwhile, removed the $114 million owed to Murray and has allowed Atlanta breathing room below the luxury tax this season.”

Here is the complete breakdown of the Hawks’ rankings in each of the five categories ESPN weighed:

The Hawks rank ninth in the Eastern Conference in the overall rankings.

Having a below-average roster and management is a recipe for another below-average season, and it will be up to the Hawks to prove they are better than the perceived sum of their parts. A decision to return to a more Trae Young-focused approach seems like a step back.

Their limited options with that approach led to the trade for Dejounte Murray, so in many ways the Hawks took a step back to reassess what to do next.

They reached the Eastern Conference Finals playing a similar brand of basketball.

However, the East has changed and opponents have developed an effective enough gameplan for postseason matchups against the Hawks. The Miami Heat showed it first in 2021-22 and the Boston Celtics showed there were still flaws even in the pairing with Murray.

Hawks’ assets offer reason for optimism moving forward

The decision-makers and the players they put on the floor will ultimately determine where the Hawks end up in each of the categories listed.

But they are positioned to improve over the next few seasons as long as they do not repeat the same mistakes of previous years. Their most egregious act may have been speeding up their internal timeline coming off that ECF run in 2020-21.

The lost time cannot be regained.

What can happen is the Hawks’ front office makes more informed decisions in trades, the draft, and free agency that – most importantly – pan out as expected.

Roster building is as much art as it is science, even in the NBA where it pays to spend. In many ways, it is necessary. But upstart teams can quickly become overpriced groups and threading that needle has proven to be most elusive for the Hawks organization.