The 2022 NBA Trade Deadline was bombastic. The James Harden-Ben Simmons deal was the highlight, but other teams also made moves. One of the teams that stayed silent was the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks made their deal a couple of weeks earlier, moving Cam Reddish to the New York Knicks. Going forward, however, the Hawks might regret not making one move at the Trade Deadline. Not trading away Danilo Gallinari was the Hawks’ biggest mistake at the 2022 NBA Trade Deadline.
Hawks’ biggest 2022 NBA Trade Deadline mistake
Of course, Danilo Gallinari has done a lot for the Hawks. Since they traded for the Italian forward in 2020 for only a second-round pick, he was the X-factor in many of their games. That includes an unlikely run to the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals. Gallo was not the key part of the squad, which is a place reserved for their star, Trae Young. In the 2021 playoffs, Gallinari put up a cool 12.8 points, while shooting an exceptional 40.5% from behind the arc. Yet, this season, Gallinari has been atrocious for the Hawks, and they really needed him.
The Atlanta Hawks are staring at a bitter fight for the postseason through the play-in tournament. They are currently 10th in the East, with a 26-29 record. That is a major fall from their 41-31 record last season, which resulted in the aforementioned run to the conference finals. It is very difficult to blame just Gallinari for their fall, but their best wing player took a nosedive in his stats across the board. He is averaging fewer points, shooting a worse percentage, and generally does not contribute a ton to the effort of the Hawks to replicate their success last season.
There were some limited rumors about the Hawks potentially moving Gallinari, but the fact they did not intensify the talks could end up hurting them severely. With two years left on his deal, the Hawks have now lost a ton of value. Trading a player with two years left has more leverage than trading an expiring contract. An argument can be made that no team wanted to take a sliding player, especially with a hefty $40 million left on his two-year contract. However, worse contracts were moved before and the teams actually got some limited value for them. Thus, it is very surprising that the Hawks could not get anyone to bite on the Gallo deal.
Additionally, with the Gallinari situation, the Hawks really could have done two things. The first option would be to include something like a second-round pick and get one of the teams in the league with a lot of cap space to take his contract on. It would likely require them to use a first-round pick or a couple of second-rounders, but the Hawks are win-now as long as Trae Young is there. Losing a pick in that deal would not hurt them as much, and shedding $20 million of their salary for the 2022 and 2023 offseasons would do wonders. With $144 million guaranteed to be paid out next season, the Hawks could have regained some flexibility in the summer to get more help to Young.
The second option would be for the Hawks to get a playoff team to trade away a second-round pick for Gallinari. Of course, getting a second-round pick does not sound too good, but it could have been paired up in the future to trade for more help for Young. If the Hawks decide to move on from anyone of John Collins, Bogdan Bogdanovic, or Clint Capela, a second-round pick might be the sweetener to get the deal across. Thus, any playoff team with bench scoring issues, or one that needs that spark of the wing, could have used Gallinari, while the Hawks would simply try to be aggressive in the summer or before next season's trade deadline.
Standing pat, the Hawks now have a situation where their team is clearly overmatched, Gallinari is not the player they need him to be, and all their cap flexibility is pretty much gone. Of course, they can always move him in the summer, but as said above, an expiring deal does not have the same value as a player with two years on his deal. In simpler terms, teams will pay a lot less for a rental, than for a player they can, in turn, flip if he does not work out.
Right now, the Hawks just need some kind of change. Coach Nate McMillan is struggling to get the best out of this squad and while he might not have believed that moving Danilo Gallinari would be a great move for the team, not moving him might be the Hawks’ biggest mistake at the 2022 NBA Trade Deadline.
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