The Atlanta Hawks made a big splash when they acquired Danilo Gallinari, but general manager Travis Schlenk says he’ll be backing up John Collins.
The Atlanta Hawks made one of the biggest splashes of the offseason when they acquired Danilo Gallinari via sign-and-trade from the OKC Thunder, but on Monday a surprise revelation came from the front office.
During a Zoom call with season ticket holders, Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk stated the following:
"“We made it clear that the role that (Danilo Gallinari) was signing up for was to come in and be a backup behind John (Collins).”"
Trading for a backup isn’t an unusual action to take in the NBA, but it’s fairly unheard of for a player to sign a three-year, $61.5 million contract in order to be a backup.
This leads one to wonder just what the plan is here. Certainly, the two could possibly play together in some big lineups, but there won’t be much defense on the floor with Gallinari, John Collins and Trae Young on the floor together, so a viable fit could be challenging.
More likely than not, a trade for John Collins will be coming down the road. Perhaps moving him was part of their plan this offseason but they haven’t been able to make anything work just yet, or maybe it won’t come together until later in the season, like the trade deadline.
It’s simply inefficient to have two of your best scorers at the same position, and not sustainable to play them together for heavy minutes.
So what exactly are the Atlanta Hawks going to do?
Collins just turned 23 years old and was a lethal scorer for the Atlanta Hawks, in spite of a 25-game suspension for violating the NBA’s anti-drug policy after testing positive for Growth Hormone Releasing Peptide-2. He played 41 games and averaged 21.6 points and 10.1 rebounds per game while shooting 58.3 percent from the floor and 40.1 percent from 3-point range.
On the other hand, Gallinari played 62 games and averaged 18.7 points and 5.2 assists per game while shooting just 43.8 percent from the floor and 40.5 percent from 3-point range. He’s 32 years old, nine years older than Collins.
The fact that Gallinari signed up for this situation indicates something must be in the works. In the offseason, he indicated that he wanted to go someplace where he could win, and that that was more important than mere money at this point in his career. Things in their current configuration don’t really seem like they serve any party’s purposes.
It’s a strange way for the Atlanta Hawks to allocate resources, and while Collins is the younger and better player, Gallinari simply makes too much money to come off the bench for the whole season.
The Hawks have made some puzzling decisions with regards to their personnel in the past, and they’ve had one of their least bizarre offseasons so far in Travis Schlenk’s tenure in Atlanta so far, even considering this situation. Still, this is a strange bit of business any way you look at it, so John Collins may find himself heading out of town sometime this coming season.