The Hawks’ goal remains winning this season and to make the playoffs. Atlanta already made a major move this season with an eye on that goal, firing coach Lloyd Pierce, though GM Travis Schlenk cautioned that trades and other player movement may not be in the cards.
“Right now, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything on the horizon, but that can change,” Chris Kirschner of The Athletic relays. “You rarely get teams’ best offers. Nobody gets real serious until you get down to the last week or two. It’s hard to gauge. We certainly will look to do anything we can to do anything we can that feels like, is going to make us a better team in the short-term and the long-term. Those sometimes don’t go hand-in-hand, but we’ll look at any situation we think that will help us.”
The status of John Collins, who will be a restricted free agent after the season, looms over the franchise. However, Schlenk emphasized that the Hawks won’t just let him walk this summer for nothing.
“John’s a big part of our team,” Schlenk added. “…He’s made the decision this fall to go to restricted free agency, and that was his choice and obviously we respect it. But we’re going to have the opportunity to match any offer he gets. We’ll certainly make him an offer in free agency as well, and he’ll have the ability to see if he can get an offer from another team. But at the end of the day, we view him as part of our team, and I don’t see a restricted free agency situation where we would just let him walk for nothing.”
