Atlanta Hawks: 5 bargain bin targets in 2019 NBA free agency

5. Jeremy Lin

If the Hawks are indeed fishing for point guards, then perhaps they should try to reel a familiar face back in.

Atlanta traded for Lin last year to give the team a steady hand while Young developed. The experiment bore out mixed results; Lin averaged 10.7 points per game with .466/.333/.845 shooting splits in 51 games as Young’s understudy, but that masked some other issues.

Among them: his pedestrian advanced stats, including a milquetoast 15.9 Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and .092 win shares per 48 minutes (WS/48); his leaky defense, as he ranked 83rd out of 112 qualified point guards in defensive Real Plus/Minus; and his detrimental effect on the team’s offense, as Atlanta scored 3.9 more points per 100 possessions when Lin wasn’t in the lineup. Plus, his numbers with the Toronto Raptors were even more uninspiring.

However, Lin was effective in the pick-and-roll — his 0.94 points per possession on such plays ranked in the 77th percentile and was far better than Young’s 0.81 — so maybe giving the veteran guard another shot wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Given the season he had in 2018-19, Lin won’t likely command anything close to the $13.7 million he made last year, but the Hawks could take a flyer on him with the mid-level exception. Considering that they don’t really have anyone to back up Young, bringing him back would make some sense.