Golden State Warriors: Complete grades for the 2019 NBA offseason

Trading for Omari Spellman

The Golden State Warriors swapped big men on July 8, sending Damian Jones and their 2026 second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks to get Omari Spellman.

Spellman, a collegiate teammate of 2019 draft pick Eric Paschall at Villanova, played in just 46 games as a rookie last season with the Hawks, who took the massive 6-foot-9 forward with the 30th overall pick in 2018.

Part of his problem as a rookie was that mass. Spellman admitted he got as heavy as 293 pounds last season (he’s listed at a more reasonable 245 pounds) and even on a team looking to give minutes to its young players, he had trouble staying in the rotation.

A hip injury in November sidelined him for more than a month in the middle of the season. That led to Spellman putting on weight. That led to him putting extra stress on his lower body, which led to a season-ending ankle injury in early March.

It was a prototypical vicious circle for Spellman, who couldn’t keep off the weight when he was hurt and kept getting hurt because he put on too much weight.

Spellman knows he needs to get the weight off and is on a stringent diet crafted by a nutritionist in his quest to get back to his playing weight by training camp.

He averaged 5.9 points and 4.2 rebounds in 17.5 minutes per game last season, shooting 40.2 percent overall and hitting 34.4 percent on 2.8 3-point tries per game — taking more than half of his 244 shots (128) from beyond the arc.

Spellman has upside and if he can keep the pounds off, the Warriors could do some interesting tag-team combinations in small-ball lineups by pairing him with Paschall (255 pounds).

The downside was losing Jones, who emerged as a starter early last season before he was lost for much of the year with a torn pectoral muscle.

Grade: B