NBA Trade Grades: Atlanta Hawks bring back Jeff Teague
By Phil Watson
Grading the trade: Atlanta Hawks
The Atlanta Hawks go into Thursday’s off day with the second-worst record in the NBA at 9-32 and a really big problem whenever Trae Young needed to come off the floor for rest or due to injury.
Young has played 66 percent of the time for the Hawks this season — 1,303 minutes — during which Atlanta has a net rating of minus-6.2. That’s not great.
But in the 680 minutes without Young on the court, which includes four games missed with injuries, the Hawks’ net rating plunges to minus-14.1, the worst off-court number of any player on the roster. A net difference of nearly eight points per 100 possessions is a lot to overcome for a team that hasn’t played that well to begin with.
Jeff Teague — who played for the Hawks from 2009-16 after they made him the 19th overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft — solves that problem.
He was an All-Star five years ago for Atlanta (2015) and even with all of the criticism he was receiving in Minnesota the last couple of seasons, he was averaging 13.2 points, 6.1 assists and 2.6 rebounds in 27.8 minutes per game as a part-time starter.
Teague is shooting 44.8 percent overall this season, right in line with his 44.6 percent career average, and is hitting 37.9 percent on 2.6 3-point attempts per game this season, which would be the second-best rate of his career (he shot 40.0 percent on 3.5 attempts a night in his final season with the Hawks in 2015-16.
If Teague is ever paired with Young, it could be a defensive disaster waiting to happen because neither really has the size to guard wings. Teague is 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds and Young is even more slight at 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds.
For Treveon Graham, Atlanta will represent his fifth team in the last three seasons and for a guy who was looking as if he could be a legitimate 3-and-D wing while with the Charlotte Hornets in 2017-18, Graham’s career has taken a dramatic downward turn.
The defense is still there. Graham is a rugged defender on the perimeter at 6-foot-5 and 223 pounds — enough so that Brooklyn Nets coach Kenny Atkinson started Graham 21 times last season as a beyond-small-ball 4.
But his shooting has been nightmarish for two straight seasons now. After hitting 43.4 percent overall and a solid 41.2 percent on 1.5 3-point attempts per game for the Hornets, Graham shot only 33.5 percent overall and a hideous 29.7 percent on 3.7 3-point attempts a night for the Nets last season.
Graham was traded along with Shabazz Napier to the Golden State Warriors in the Kevin Durant–D’Angelo Russell everyone-gets-a-sign-and-trade deal in July and was later swapped to the Timberwolves — again with Napier — for the rights to 2006 second-round pick Lior Eliyahu (a long shot, perhaps, to come to the NBA, seeing as he’s 34 years old now).
With Minnesota, Graham started 20 of his 33 appearances, averaging 5.2 points and 3.0 rebounds in 20.1 minutes per game, shooting 35.4 percent overall (actually an improvement from last season), but just 24.1 percent on 2.5 deep launches nightly.
The Hawks had only 14 players on the roster before the trade, so there will not be a need to waive anyone to make room for Teague and Graham.
It’s a low-risk move to fill a need — at least for the remainder of this year — and can be a mentor figure to Young in much the same way Jeremy Lin filled that role in Atlanta last season before being waived after the trade deadline.
At this point, Allen Crabbe was simply taking away minutes that would be better spent on the development of second-year wing Kevin Huerter and rookies De’Andre Hunter and Cam Reddish. Being able to flip Crabbe for a legitimate NBA-quality point guard to play behind Young is a terrific deal by Atlanta general manager Travis Schlenk.