Atlanta Hawks: 5 goals for the 2018 offseason

5. Trade Dennis Schroder

Dennis Schroder is a capable starting point guard in this league. He just shouldn’t be Atlanta’s.

Schroder has one of the best mid-range games in the NBA. He’s proven that he can score in bunches:

If you blink, you might miss him getting to the basket:

So what’s the problem?

Well, for starters, he’s not a great 3-point shooter.

Schroder’s best season from 3-point land came in the 2014-15 season, where he shot 35.1 percent from deep. If he shot that this season, he’d just be 1.1 percent off from the league average, which isn’t shabby at all!

Unfortunately for Schroder (and the Hawks), he shot 29.0 percent from deep, a huge step back from the season prior where he converted 34 percent of his looks. To be fair, Schroder averaged the most field goal attempts of his career this year at 17.1 per game, but it’s not like he was the only option the Hawks had for scoring.

The 3-point shooting isn’t the only part of Schroder’s game though, so there have got to be some positives right? Well, there are … some.

Schroder shot 84 percent from the free throw line, which was a top-30 mark in the NBA this season. Schroder also averaged 6.2 assists per game, which was tied for 13th in the league with Elfrid Payton.

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Schroder also averaged 4.0 trips to the free throw line, tied for 40th in the association with Tyreke Evans. While that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, it’s still top-50! That’s right about where the good stops for Schroder though.

Schroder has only finished with a positive net rating once in his career, which means that only once in his career has he had a positive effect on the Hawks while on the court. To make matters worse, this past season he posted a -6.6 net rating, only the second lowest net rating of his career. The worst one he posted? That came in the 2013-14 season when he posted a -16.2 net rating… when his teammates were Kyle Korver, Al Horford, Paul Millsap and Kent Bazemore.

While he was undoubtedly the Hawks’ No. 1 offensive option this season (as evidenced by his 30.4 percent usage rate, which was nearly eight percent higher than the next closest player on that list, Kent Bazemore), that doesn’t necessarily excuse the poor shooting numbers.

For a player who doesn’t have a 3-point shot in his arsenal, it’s worrisome that the average distance of Schroder’s field goal attempts are 12.0 feet away from the basket. This past season, he consistently shot the farthest away from the basket he ever has – 12.9 feet.

Does all this mean Schroder is not a good NBA player? No. Like I said earlier, I think he’s a capable starting point guard – he’s just not a terribly efficient one. The three years and $45 million left on his contract aren’t terrible for a young, decent point guard, but in that same vein, they may be better off trying to clear that money off the books.

A straight up swap of Darren Collison for Dennis Schroder works, and the Indiana Pacers could enjoy a beautiful blend of offense and defense with him alongside Victor Oladipo, the league’s leader in steals. Maybe the Pistons and Hawks make a swap of their starting point guards with Reggie Jackson. Detroit has no picks to offer for the foreseeable future, so this truly would have to be a straight up player-for-player deal, but who knows? They just need to trade him.