Atlanta Hawks: Analyzing The Ersan Ilyasova Trade
By Adam McGee
The Price
All in all, the Hawks couldn’t have paid a much lower price while also picking up a genuine contributor who isn’t owed money beyond the end of this season.
Although many teams would be precious with second-rounders, which are still valuable as the league tries to adjust to its recent salary cap jump, the Hawks have been diligently adding assets in deals over the past few seasons and have the luxury to part with a pick of this kind while still having plenty more in reserve.
In terms of moving on from Splitter, the Hawks had been expected to do this in order to free up what had basically been a handicapped roster spot for the season up until this point. With Splitter hitting free agency in the summer, the Hawks had moved beyond a point where they had any motivation to hold on in hope of a return to health.
There will be a touch of sadness in Splitter’s departure, as prior to the start of the 2015-16 season many believed he could have been the perfect complementary big man alongside Paul Millsap and Al Horford. The thought was that Splitter’s addition to the frontcourt rotation could help shore up Atlanta’s long-running rebounding problem, but that plan never really got a chance to come to fruition.
In reality, Splitter’s injury problems played a major part in the way the team has been reshaped in the past 12 months. If Splitter had stayed healthy, Horford and Jeff Teague may still be Hawks, Dwight Howard could be playing elsewhere and maybe Atlanta would have been closer to the top of the Eastern Conference.
In the end, after being essentially gifted to the Hawks when the Spurs needed to clear space to sign LaMarcus Aldridge, Splitter was an experiment that failed miserably for Mike Budenholzer’s team.