Atlanta Hawks Have Two Terrible Contracts to Solve This Off-season

The Atlanta Hawks are headed into the off-season full of excitement after an encouraging 2018-19 season. The franchise is headed in the right direction but still has two contract problems on their roster.

Rebuilds are rarely fun and the Atlanta Hawks have been through a painful one. Shedding good players and taking on painful contracts.  Now with the emergence of Trae Young and John Collins Atlanta will head into the off-season heading in the opposite direction.

With potentially two top ten draft picks and plenty of free agent targets, Atlanta is expected to make improvements this off-season.

Still, there are some roster issues left over from the rebuild namely Miles Plumlee and Kent Bazemore.  Bazemore will be the Hawk’s highest paid player at $19.2-million, while Plumlee comes in second at $12.5-million.

The Hawks next highest paid player will be Trae Young who is set to make roughly half of Plumlee’s salary. For Hawk’s fans who watched the team closely last season, this is both a sickening and laughable fact.

Miles Plumlee is worthless on the trade market currently, he cannot stay healthy and his only upside, when he is actually on the court, is the fact he happens to be very tall. His contract is one the Hawks will likely have to wait out or decide to part ways with him altogether.

Bazemore is one of the most confusing NBA players I have ever watched. At times he simply cannot miss and plays shutdown defense making himself a valuable asset to the Hawks. Other times he disappears completely shooting brick after brick.

There isn’t any question he is making more than his play deserves. The Hawks only hope with moving Bazemore is taking on another bad and expiring contract that could fit their team better than Bazemore does.

Bazemore averaged 11.6 points per game this past season for Atlanta. Not exactly deserving of being the highest paid player on the roster.

The future is bright for the Hawks but they do have roster issues they must fix this off-season. Finding ways to part with the remnants of their rebuild and move towards putting a team around Trae Young.