The Hawks ended up not making a move at Thursday’s 3 p.m. NBA trade deadline, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The feeling around the front office is the roster is just now coming together, after injuries and COVID-19 upended it in the first half of the season, and they want to see if the team can make some progress with this current group.
The Hawks also already made a move Jan. 13, trading Cam Reddish and Solomon Hill to the Knicks for a first-round pick and Kevin Knox. They won seven consecutive games not long after that.
They lost two games in a row in Toronto on Feb. 4 and Dallas on Feb. 6 because of some uncharacteristically clunky offense, but still are one of the top offensive teams in the league by most metrics (including No. 2 in offensive rating at 113.6 and No. 2 in 3-point percentage at 37.6%). The Hawks underachieved in starting the season 17-25, after making the Eastern Conference finals last year and bringing back a nearly identical roster, but have played better as of late.
When asked at practice Thursday if he thinks the Hawks need to add anything at the trade deadline, or if they’re fine as they are, star guard Trae Young said this: “I’m always confident with who I have with me, and I always feel like we have a chance to win, and I feel like with what we have here, we have a chance to do special things.”
The Hawks still are hopeful they can make a run at a top-six seed in the Eastern Conference, per coach Nate McMillan, if they can put some win streaks together.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Hawks are two games under .500 at 26-28 and are No. 10 in the Eastern Conference standings, 4.5 games out of the No. 6 seed. The top six spots are guaranteed playoff spots, while seeds No. 7-10 have another hurdle to climb in the play-in tournament.
“We dropped two games on the road,” McMillan said after Tuesday’s win vs. the shorthanded Pacers at State Farm Arena. “We have two games coming up, or one now, here at home, and it’s just important that we get to playing good basketball and getting ourselves back into the race for the playoffs.
“We’re not talking about the top 10, we’re talking about the top six where you’re guaranteed a position, and we have an opportunity to do that, and we’ve got a lot of work to make up, and really it started tonight.”
