At 18-16, the Atlanta Hawks are 5th in the
Eastern Conference, battling for a top-four seed and home court advantage in
the playoffs. They’ve won 3 straight games and are coming off of a 114-112 win
over the San Antonio Spurs in overtime at home. In short, things are looking
good for the Hawks at the moment.
At the same time, their leading scorer Paul Millsap (17.8 points and 8.2 rebounds per game) is frequently
being mentioned in trade rumors. It’s not like there’ve been a few whispers of
him possibly being moved. This is out in the open. On New Year’s Day, Marc
Stein and Brian Windhorst of ESPN both reported that Paul Millsap could be
traded in advance of the trade deadline due to the impending player option on
his contract, which he’ll be able to exercise this summer.
Due to this player option, Paul Millsap could theoretically
be an unrestricted free agent in the summer, but it’s no guarantee that he’ll
exercise his option. Even if he does exercise his option, he could do so as a
means to re-upping with the Hawks for more cash. So, the possibility of him
hitting the free agent market doesn’t necessarily indicate that he’ll choose to
leave Atlanta.
If there’s any indication that he won’t choose to bail on
Atlanta, his words to Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution seem
to be pretty solid proof that he wants to remain a member of the Atlanta Hawks:
“Everybody knows where my heart is and where I want to be. That would be here
[Atlanta], yes.”
Unless the Atlanta Hawks are utterly convinced that Paul
Millsap would hop on the first steamboat out of Atlanta if given the chance,
they need to seriously think about whether or not they want to really trade
him. Paul Millsap is one of the top forwards in the NBA and by trading him,
they’ll essentially be heading for rebuilding mode. I could understand making
such a move if the Hawks were below .500 and struggling to make the playoffs,
but as a team that could get home court advantage in the first round of the
playoffs, looking to pull the plug and rebuild feels a bit premature.
The Hawks brought in Dwight
Howard as a complimentary piece to Paul Millsap down low and they also have
a quality young point guard in Dennis
Schröder, who is averaging 17.5 points and 6.3 assists per game. In
addition to Howard and Schröder, the Hawks have other quality pieces around
Paul Millsap as well like Tim Hardaway,
Jr., Kyle Korver, and Tiago Splitter,
who is currently sidelined with a calf injury.
The bottom line is that the Hawks have a quality team with
Paul Millsap as their centerpiece, which means there’s really no reason to blow
the whole team off the map. While they aren’t a championship contending team,
they are still a competitive team that is growing and getting better. I
understand that sometimes you need to have a championship or bust type of
approach as an NBA franchise, but I see no reason to have such an attitude when
you are in the mix to get home court advantage in an opening round playoff
series.
With that all being said, it sounds like the Atlanta Hawks
are determined to find a home for Paul Millsap, which means that there will be
a lot of teams bidding for his services at the trade deadline.
As far as possible trade partners go, the Boston Celtics are
an obvious team that could be willing to make a move. If you read my blog last
week, you’d know that I think the Boston Celtics are in need of a trade to
really threaten the Cleveland Cavaliers. If the Boston Celtics added Paul
Millsap to the fold and reunited him with Al
Horford, they could really be cooking with gas.
Other teams that come to mind are the Philadelphia 76ers,
who might be shopping Nerlens Noel, the
Phoenix Suns, who might be shopping Eric
Bledsoe, and maybe even the Utah Jazz, who Paul Millsap had great success
with for many years. The Utah Jazz made the mistake of letting Paul Millsap go
and so they could right that wrong by maybe trading away Derrick Favors to get him.
The only issue with making a move for Paul Millsap for the
Utah Jazz (22-14) is that they are playing really good ball with their current
roster and in order to get him, they would have to part with some pieces that
they probably don’t want to part with. All the same, given Paul Millsap’s success
in Utah and how much he liked the area, the Utah Jazz wouldn’t be crazy to at
least entertain the possibility of bringing him back into the fold.
If I can be totally honest, I don’t like the idea of Paul
Millsap having to once again move on to a new city. He’s a really good dude and
has played worthy of being a franchise player in both Utah and Atlanta, two
teams that historically don’t contend for championships very often. The Jazz
and Hawks are lucky they’ve had Paul Millsap both as a basketball player and as
a citizen in their community.
Like I said, the Hawks would be crazy to trade Paul Millsap
since they won’t get that same level of production in return and in addition,
they’ll be heading in the direction of the NBA Draft Lottery. It makes no sense
to me why you would trade a guy like Paul Millsap when he’s got your team in
the thick of a playoff race, but perhaps that’s why I’m a sports journalist and
not an NBA general manager.
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