When it comes to the NBA offseason so far, one of the teams with the best negotiations is the Atlanta Hawks.
First, they won the NBA draft lottery, landing the services of one of the two best players available in the talent pool in Zaccharie Risacher, the 19-year-old French forward who has the potential to become one of the team’s franchise players down the road. While the Hawks didn’t make any additional moves to shake things up further on draft night, opting not to trade with the Spurs or package the pick to acquire a top-tier veteran talent, in the end, Atlanta added a top-tier player and is better off for it.
The Hawks then doubled down on their team-building philosophy and traded DeJounte Murray to the New Orleans Pelicans for Cody Zeller, Larry Nance Jr., E.J. Liddell, Dyson Daniels, and a 2025 first-round draft pick (via the Lakers), and a conditional first-round draft pick in 2027. Now, admittedly, this move effectively announced that the initial Murray trade was a failure, but hey, better to correct a mistake early than live with the consequences of that failure for years, and the Hawks now have a deeper asset pool as a result.
So, with no other major moves to be made in free agency, what could be the “biggest mistake” the Hawks made in free agency? Well, it’s not so much the deal they made as the deal they didn’t make, as, considering the Hawks’ current salary cap situation, they passed up a potentially valuable opportunity to build a team for nothing.
The Hawks should have re-signed Saddiq Bey
As things currently stand, the Hawks head into the 2024-25 season as a team that is over the salary cap, roughly in the first apron but about $11 million under the second apron, according to Spotrac. Because of this contract quagmire, the Hawks do not have access to the taxpayer mid-level exception and could theoretically sign another player worth just over $5 million, but other than that, they can only acquire talent through trades, using their assets — be it contracts or draft picks — to make moves.
And yet, as teams like the Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers have learned, there is a loophole of sorts in the current CBA that allows teams to create trade exceptions using the Bird rights of players on their current roster, which they can then use in future trades that require an equivalent salary.
You see, while executing a sign-and-trade can leave a team tied up on the front end — and the process is becoming increasingly difficult for the NBA’s most expensive teams that can’t tack on multiple contracts in exchange for one player — once a player agrees to a new deal, he can be traded like anyone else once his restrictions are lifted. Because teams can exceed the cap to re-sign their own players to any deal they’re eligible for via the Bird rights, the 76ers were able to give KJ Martin a two-year, $16 million contract, and the Suns did the same with Josh Okogie on an identical deal.
Why, you might ask, is this relevant to the Hawks? Well, because they could have re-signed Saddiq Bey to a similar contract, or the three-year, $20 million deal he signed with the Washington Wizards to keep him on the team, allow him to play in the future, or trade him to a contending team once he is cleared to play.
Now, maybe the Hawks felt like they already had too many movable contracts and simply didn’t see the need to add another; Murray was traded nearly a week before Bey signed with the Wizards, and with Nance, Daniels, Liddell and Zeller all under contract for varying amounts between $2.12 million and $11.2 million, Atlanta has plenty of contracts to match the money in a potential deal. Still, considering Bey’s age, talent, value and the sunk cost associated with his initial acquisition, one has to wonder if the Hawks wouldn’t be better off with the Villanova product still under contract, especially if they don’t need him to “win now” considering the nature of the team.
In the end, this deal isn’t that big of a deal by any stretch, as using Bey as a human trade piece likely won’t help the Hawks now or in the future, but it is a bit confusing for the team with the second overall pick to make such a smart trade decision when the team that picked before it could have done the same thing using their Bird rights but opted not to. Though the move may have been a small one, giving away an asset for free isn’t the best option for a team looking to do a soft rebuild after years of being stuck in the middle.
