The Brooklyn Nets just drafted North Carolina wing Drake Powell with the No. 22 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft -- a pick the Atlanta Hawks held as recently as Tuesday. That they watched another team make the pick only highlights the own goal of trading for and then quickly dumping the contract of Terance Mann.
The Oklahoma City Thunder just hoisted the Larry O'Brien trophy and seem poised to contend for many more championships over the coming years. Credit for their success is due to many parties, but Thunder GM Sam Presti certainly deserves the lion's share.
One move he was well known for was taking on the contract of another player to help a team that needed to clear salary to make another move, taking a draft pick or two as compensation. Then they would rehabilitate that player's value and trade him to another team, gaining more draft picks in the process. He was a master of gaining value "coming and going" with veteran players.
The Atlanta Hawks just made a pair of trades that did exactly the opposite: it cost them "coming and going" and highlighted just how terrible a trade they made at February's Trade Deadline. The Hawks and LA Clippers made a trade of shooting guards, with the Clippers adding offense-first guard Bogdan Bogdanovic, and the Hawks adding defense-first guard Terance Mann.
This was no neutral swap, however. The Hawks would have been foolish to trade Bogdanovic for Mann straight up, but perhaps Bogey's injury history made it defensible. Atlanta went even further, however, sending three second-round picks to the Clippers and taking on the dead money of Bones Hyland.
The Terance Mann trade was a disaster
The problems with the trade stacked up to the moon. Terance Mann wasn't all that good, to start; he had some run as a hard-nosed defensive wing for a couple seasons in Los Angeles, but their defense took off when the Clippers signed better defenders like Kris Dunn, Derrick Jones Jr. and even Nic Batum. Add in a complete lack of offensive production outside of open 3-pointers and you get a fringe rotation player.
Now add on the contract. The Clippers re-signed Mann to a three-year extension that kicks in this upcoming season for three years and $47 million. That's about $30 million too much for what Mann brings to the table. For any team to give up real assets for Mann was clearly a mistake.
For the Hawks it was pure insanity. They already had Dyson Daniels in the midst of a breakout season. Daniels led the league in steals and is essentially the same archetype as Mann but better in every way. Teams don't need two such players; Daniels perfectly fills that role for Atlanta.
The Porzingis trade was a good trade, and he fills a need and raises their ceiling. Yet the trade was much more expensive than it even had to be because Atlanta had to dump Mann's salary at an expensive cost because of how underwater it was.
What's more, the Hawks couldn't even merely attach a handful of second-round picks, as they only have a few left after sending three to LA in the Terance Mann trade! They overpaid so much they had to overpay again to dump his salary.
The Hawks could use a wing like Powell. They could use a backup guard. They could use more talent overall as they try to make a move in the Eastern Conference, but they had to give up a full first-round pick just to dump Terance Mann. That's a painful reality.
The Hawks are still having a great start to the offseason, but part of their success has been unraveling the poor decisions of the previous regime. Terance Mann stands as a particularly vivid one, a sobering reminder of how the Hawks need to be smarter moving forward.