The Atlanta Hawks made some big moves to improve their team during the offseason. The biggest addition may be Danilo Gallinari, who signed the biggest multi-year deal for a player 30 years old or older and has never made an All-Star Game. Now that the Hawks have invested so much in Gallinari, what can he bring and where does that leave John Collins?
On the daily Locked On Hawks Podcast, host Brad Rowland was joined by Erik Horne of The Athletic to discuss Gallinari and why Collins may be on the trading block now:
Erik Horne: The Thunder did a really good job of managing Gallinari physically. I think they rested him on the second night of back-to-backs a lot during the season. Now with the season even more condensed, I think that that's going to be really important for him. The Hawks are going to have to work out a way to rescue him on the nights where they're playing three games in five nights or three games in four nights.
I don't know what's going to happen with John Collins, maybe we can get into that later, but it's not a bad thing to have some depth at the power forward position with Gallinari. As you said, he's older, he has an injury history, and he's not as great as he was. Defensively, he's not very explosive but just his presence on the floor, as I mentioned, is going to open up a lot of stuff. He doesn't need a lot of space to get his shot off, he can shoot over the top of defenses … He's a guy who can shoot the 3 off the dribble a little bit. He's just a phenomenal shooter at his size, and that's going to just change the geometry of the floor for guys like Trae Young.
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