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Hawks mailbag: What led to last season's late surge?

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Brad Rowland (@BTRowland) hosts Episode 2312 of the Locked on Hawks podcast. Topics include the biggest factors in last season's late surge by the Atlanta Hawks, how Dyson Daniels' contract looks in comparison to the new deal signed by Amen Thompson, the potential of retiring Joe Johnson's number, and the latest news with less than three weeks until training camp. 

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Hawks mailbag: What led to last season's late surge?

Locked On Hawks - Daily Podcast On The Atlanta Hawks

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Locked On Hawks - Daily Podcast On The Atlanta Hawks — Hawks mailbag: What led to last season's late surge?. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. This is Jake from Lockdown. When the game is on the line, the best no end to pass. Because the right assist can change everything. And off the court, it's no different. That's where your State Farm agent comes in. Whether it's protecting your car, your home, or helping you prep for the unexpected, they'll help set you up with a game plan that works for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And cover options are selected by the customer, availability and eligibility, vary by state. Thank you for making Lockdown your first listen every day. For your second listen, find the Lockdown NBA Podcast where there's no off season. West Matt and Hayes keep you up to date on contract negotiations, rumors, and everything you need to be the most informed NBA fan. Find Lockdown NBA on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.

On today's show, training camp is living for the Atlanta Hawks and there are many questions to answer, including what actually happened at the end of last season. We're going to all that and more coming on. You are Lockdown Hawks. You're daily Atlanta Hawks Podcast. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. On Tuesday. For G4T. Every day. Hello friends. Welcome to episode 2312 of the Lockdown Hawks Podcast. I am your host Brad Rowling coming to you on a Wednesday evening, in Tuesday as we get closer to the middle of September and I will hit some news at the end of this podcast around the Atlanta Hawks but nothing is crazy happening right now on the news run that moves and it will too too much. I'll want to dive in to the most part today on, to the mail back. Honestly, with less than three weeks now until training camp begins, Media Day is nearing plenty to talk about. If you missed it earlier this week by the way, I did an episode with Glenn Willis, a player capsule, with done a bunch of those already in the feed talking about some of the key players

on the Hawks roster prior to that. Been fiber join the show for a two-parter on the NBA draft and there's plenty more to come. But first, let's talk right in to a question from Austin who says, he's talking about the show about which factors led to the Hawks' run at the end of last season. So which ones, meaning the factors, would you project to continue to be built on this season and which factors were more lightning in a bottle? So if you were under a rock at the end of last season, the Hawks had a great, great run at the end of the regular season before they lost to the Knicks and the playoffs where they still led that series by the way, two to one. From February 22nd through April 10th is the sweet spot basically of that run. I'm excluding the final game of the year where they set everybody and lost by 25 points because they weren't really trying to win that game, but they went 19 and four over a 23 game sample size and I intentionally left in a couple of loss at the end. Actually, we're 19 and two at one point over a period of time, but they had the best

net rating in the NBA over that six or seven week period from late February through early April. They had a plus 13.1 net rating, corn NBA.com. Actually better than that plus 15.1, according to the glass, which actually filters out garbage time. So normally it's the opposite of that, but the Hawks were even more dominant if you took the garbage time minutes out of that sample size. They pushed them all the way to where they were at the end of the, at the end of the season when they were in that battle for the five or six seed and it was a crucial, crucial thing both for the present and the future for the Hawks. They're number four in offense, number two in defense. They were top five in shooting efficiency, top ten in offense, turn over rate, top five in offense, of rebound rate, which is crazy. Number one in the whole league at creating turnovers defensively, top five in defensive rebounding and top ten in opponent shooting. So basically they were very, very, very dominant over a six, seven week period, something like that in that sample size. I think a 19 and four overall. The first thing that I always look at to kind of tell you is something that's like fluke

in a super small sample size is three point shooting on offense and defense. In the Hawks, shot 37% from three point range in the sample, which is obviously quite good, but only seventh in the league over the sample size and they were in that same exact range for the full season. So right in line with that, that's nothing crazy at all. Opponent shot 34 and a half percent from three. I guess the Hawks in those 23 games, which is on the lower side to be fair, but nothing crazy at all. In fact, for the season, they shot 35.5%. So one percentage point lower is not out of the ordinary at all. Maybe kind of helpful on the margins, but not a big reason why the dominant run happened for Atlanta. The biggest thing maybe is like the rebounding uptick was part of the success. Obviously, as I've discussed many times in recent days, I'll probably do even more of this. What's up with a Kong Wu on the player capsule with my willess, but they were all pretty good defensive rebounding team last year. Anytime they had an actual center available to play, whether it was a Kong Wu or Landdale, for example, they have one of those guys on the court for roughly nine hundred and

sixty minutes and the 1100 down the stretch of this sample size before Jack got hurt. And they basically dominated the defensive glass when they had those on the floor unsurprisingly. Also they got offensive rebounds at a very, very high rate. Maybe the biggest stat profile change of them all during this quarter season was that they were awesome on the offensive glass. And the Hawks had a 38% offensive rebound rate with Joc Landdale on the court. That is elite stuff. Not sustainable probably, but that's number one of the league level basically. And they were also quite good with the Kong Wu on the court and that sample was well 32%. So they generally crashed the glass more and more as the year went along. So it was kind of kind of explainable, but still a uptick for sure. And then the other big thing was the defensive turnover creation. They were number one in the league in that area, as mentioned before. Also number one points off turnovers, number three and fast break points. They were able to kind of generate havoc defensively and then turn that into easy points basically. So that's kind of what they did by the numbers.

Obviously they had also this great lineup. I should have discussed many times, but they basically had it one of the top five. Lineups in the entire league that was playing a lot of minutes or it's the apple size, which is that McCollum Alexander Walker, Daniels Johnson, a common lineup. That was basically just completely dominating everybody for a large sample size. So the other part of the question though is kind of what I was project to be stuff that could be built on and then which ones were lighting in the bottle. That was the question that he asked. I think you have to include at least a reference to the schedule that happened during this run. It was very easy, fair to say. I do think it's overstated by some people who insist to me, even now that it's the court unquote only reason why the hawks had this nice run. That's just not true. Now until Landdale went down with the injury that was Go Go Batazzi related, they were healthy at this point, which was very helpful. That's notable for sure, beyond the schedule, but the starting five with McCollum worked right away in the entire time.

Never stopped working and then they finally had some actual depth. What's they brought in Kaminga when he was healthy after he arrived and had to sit for a couple weeks. And then when Landdale was around, they actually had a coherent rotation for the first time all year in a lot of ways that was actually healthy. And look, I have dissected the sample size ad nauseam for a very long time. And I don't think they would have gone 19 and four with a plus 15 net rating if they faced a good schedule. That's probably fair to say, but at the same time, they also were playing well. And they were healthier and they had a roster that was just more making sense, basically, at that point in time. But by the way, I know this schedule was was soft. They also did beat Philadelphia in this run. They beat Orlando twice. They beat Detroit on the road. They beat Boston. They also lost to the next by three. Lost to the, something's by seven on the road and then played the cabs close as well in a deep game on the road late. So they only losses over one bad loss the entire time for seven weeks.

And it was this game in Houston, we lost by a bunch. And even then they had a terrible shooting game and so did Houston. Had a great shooting game in the same time. So they basically didn't have a single bad loss and then they beat the, they were supposed to beat. And that's not, that sounds easy. I understand that, but it does have to happen. You got to win the games. If you want to include the schedule, basically in the lightning of the bottle portion, then to each their own. Personally, I don't view that as being fake. I think it was aided by the schedule. Would they have gone, I don't even know. Would they have gone 15 and eight normally instead of 19 and four, maybe? But both can be true at once. They played really well and they had a soft schedule. That's all fair, but it did happen from a stat standpoint. The thing I would say that it's not likely to continue is the offense remounting as I said before. I think Landale helps that quite a bit and he's back for the full season, of course. They did begin to send more guys to the glass. So it's not ridiculous, but I would not have them as a top five group in that particular area.

I think the defensive turnover creation was number one on the league in the sample size. That could happen again. They have better talent defensively right now than they had last year when you add in Ludo or even Aaron Wiggins. So I'm trying to avoid this answer being too terribly long. So I'll just say this that other than the Kiwis and a Walker who had a crazy hot shooting stretch here, no one else had this like outlier individual performance either. Like that's another encouraging thing for me is that nothing that happened in this run feels like wholly unsustainable to me, which is encouraging. So hopefully I asked you a question in some ways. Yes, the schedule helped. But they also played much, much, much better. And until go go to the top step then they had a rotation that made sense for the only time all year long. And then they played at a high level. So that is that to me is encouraging and I wouldn't want to throw any of it away. Even if there is some context, that's very, very helpful. All right, more to come in a moment when it comes to the impact on Dyson's contract that I'm on top of top right might have plus a Joe Johnson question that we'll get to in the latest news. We're getting all that and more in just one moment.

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And we have a question now from Zach who says in light of almond Thompson's $40 million a year extension, Dyson's deal has to look even better, right? They have early similar advanced metrics and they are the same age. So that was the most, this is kind of the most newsy of the questions that I got. So almond Thompson signed a big extension about a week ago. And I got questions in a similar vein to this, but Zach's was probably the most all in cupacing. So I'm going to answer that. Plus there was a whole social media conference that I saw where someone like basically dared to mention Dyson and almond in the same sentence. I got yelled at for it, but I think that person was correct to do so. Honestly, because look, I, I, to answer the question very plainly, I think Dyson's deal already looks good. And then the side by side here is favorable for his contract favorable. Keep that in mind. Clear. I understand why almond Thompson got more than Dyson Daniels. I do. He was always going to get more that was always going to happen. He's the more established score. He was the top five pick in the draft in the way that Dyson knows the eighth pick, but

was a little bit different. Pederuwise. And for better or worse, the rockets think a man is like their franchise player and they're willing to tell that to anyone who will listen. That's not what I think of a men Thompson. Honestly, I think he's a good player for sure. But it's known around the league that the rockets love almond Thompson. I think Tim McMan of the Espiance of this recently on the podcast that the rockets view him as like a top Templar in the whole league. That's kind of crazy to me, but it does track with what I, with what I've heard about them and almond. Anyway, for purposes of this question, I'm going to compare them a little bit as players and contracts. Keep in mind, Dyson is making 25 million a year flat. That's per season not coming up at all for four seasons. It begins at 15% of the cap this year, one 5% of the cap and goes down because it's because the cap is rising and his conflict is not rising to about 13% by the end. A man is making more than 35 million in his first year of an extension with full raises and that averages 41.6 million over the life of a five year contract.

It starts about 20.6% of the cap. This was about 22 plus percent by the end. That is very meaningfully more money for almond for obvious reasons. For example, in the final year, year four of Dyson's contract, he'll make 16.6 million dollars less than I'm in Thompson in that same season. That's a lot, I have to say. Now, as part of the question, I did a Zack mentioned someone said kind of a passive, which wants to say this out loud. These guys were born seven weeks apart. They're the same age. Dyson signed an extension a year earlier than almond. It was drafted a year earlier, but they are the same age and they're the same size. A man is listed at six seven and two hundred pounds. Dyson six seven and one ninety nine. That's not a joke. One pound difference. That's hilarious to me, but alas, both guys are defense first athletic players on the wing who also have shooting issues. That's very obvious. Admittedly, almond is one of the best athletes in the entire league and Dyson isn't quite on that level. He's a good athlete.

I think underrated in that regard, almond is more athletic. For sure. One thing that I will say that is kind of funny to me is that Dyson is well known to be a not very good perimeter shooter. That's not controversial. Even if I do maintain that last year was clearly the outlier and not the norm, I will say that because almond Thompson is a worse shooter than Dyson Daniels historically. For his career from three, almond is shooting twenty one point nine percent from three. That's about what Dyson shot last year in his outlier bad season. For his career, Dyson is at twenty nine point eight percent, which is eight percent higher than almond. And before last year was thirty two point seven percent. And that's more I think it actually actually is. So that does not mean almond is a worse offensive player overall. Like I am consistent in noting this across the board. I'll say the same thing for almond. He is the more established score. Eight points again last year. He's a career 58 percent true, but two point shooter. That's very good.

That's not the same from two last year. Dyson, almond fifty seven percent or so. Dyson's been better away from the rim year over year consistently. And almond's been better actually at the rim, which tracks. If you watch him, he's a great finisher. He really is. But despite a big advantage in usage for almond, Dyson average more assists per game last year. Despite not being the number one guy. That's notable to me. One of almond's big differentiators for most perimeter players is office rebounding as well, where he is awesome. But that's the one area where no one's really like a lot better than Dyson. In fact, I'm in was probably the best in the league on the opposite glass last year. And Dyson was like one B like they were definitely one and two in some order on the opposite glass. So not a huge advantage for either guy. Now, I'm not sure what the contestant would be between Dyson and almond. Defensively I asked around for instance, question. People like maybe we're leaning on man to some degree. I lean Dyson, quite honestly. The metrics point to Dyson being better. And I think almond is on the short list of guys who it's not like so obvious Dyson's

better. But in the advanced numbers, Dyson's the better player on defense. Overall, the advanced numbers, I think kind of make this a draw maybe slightly a lean to almond like EPM and DPM have Thompson with a slight edge. Dyson has the edge and RAPM. They were quite literally side by side in the old Raptor reign of Chikolak Chikol. Now they're actually called Laker now, the old 538 ratings that Neil Payne still maintains. A man was number 11 in the league last year and Dyson was number 12, which is kind of crazy. And by the way, Dyson was better on a permanent basis. A man led the entire league in minutes played last year. So one last time, I'm not trying to frame it to say that Dyson's better than I'm in. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that the gap between the two is a lot smaller than the contract when they indicate and that maybe public perception indicates after Dyson's shooting season last year. I will go over this more when I talk about Dyson and the player cap souls. He was awesome last year to spike the bad shooting.

We'll see how the contract looks for a man by the end. I think it's a pretty hefty investment in him. I get why they love him. By the way, the advanced metrics really love a man that just also like Dyson quite a bit. So they're both rated very highly, which I think is more directionally correct. I think if you were a shooting zealot, you probably don't love either of them. I think both guys are like proving that shooting is not the only thing that matters. Yes, there's limitations there for sure, but they're very good in basically every other way, both guys, which matters. But for me, the biggest takeaway is that Dyson's contract remains a very good value. And yes, I think as a single data point here, a man getting like two thirds more money on an annual basis than Dyson does makes the deal look better because the gap between them is not that big. If you want to say I'm in better by all means, is he 16.6 million dollars better by the end? I'm going to say no, that's not the case, especially because again, they're the same age, same size, all those things. So a good question there from Zach, and I appreciate the question as always.

I got this is I want to say this one up a little bit. I got some questions about this in general, but the hawks put out one of those very useful social media prompts that go viral. This one was the white and navy jerseys that used to use from 2007 to 2015 and basically asked which player is the first one that you think of when you see that jersey in particular. I said Joe Johnson actually said, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe Johnson as a shout out to Ryan Cameron. But the question that was asked that I want to answer is that Patrick said, is there a reason in your opinion, the hawks have not retired Joe's number yet? I feel he has the credentials to warrant it. So I do this like every year, I feel like in the summer at some point with retired numbers and different variations of this. One thing I'll say at the top, some teams, some teams, French eyes, have like very like publicly available criteria that they use for retiring numbers. The hawks do not have that. The hawks have kind of lower the bar a little bit, just talk about a little bit in a second,

but that's important to note, there's not like an objective standard. It's like the team, whether it's Tony wrestler or Steve Conan or I don't know who makes the final decision on this, but it's not like an interesting like black and white issue. Anyway, Joe was awesome with the hawks. He arrived and basically helped them go from being like a joke of organization honestly for a long time to being a quality team. And he was the piece that arrived along. I think he and Al Horford get a lot of credit for that along the way Josh Smith to, but I think Joe Joe is arrival and assignment trade and all the Atlanta spirit groups stuff that I won't get into right now if you're a new or a fan, a new or a listener. But Joe averaged 21, 5 and 4 in his seven year hawks 10 year. He made six straight all-star games with the hawks. He had one injury basically in seven years and otherwise played like all the time. Zooming out, he has more than 20,000 career points. He's in top 50 all time NBA scoring list if you remove the ABA from the list.

His competition basically to retire his number. I always say the comparison points are Pete Maribache and Kevin Matomo in particular because those are the more new school always closer to the newer version retired numbers for the hawks. I always say this, but Maribache played four years with Atlanta only and had two all-star appearances. Joe played seven years six all-star games. Maribache's best years happened with a different team. He was better with the jazz than he was with the hawks. In contrast, Joe's prime Joe's best years were in Atlanta. That's just fair. Matomo played four and a half years. You can argue obviously he's more of a legendary community figure. Awesome defender, different kind of players obviously, but Joe played two and a half years more than the Kevin did in Atlanta. I know there's like some people, somebody else asked me why maybe Joe's, are they waiting on Joe for some reason or are they going to do it? I don't know the answer to that. I will say part of this may be that Joe did the thing where he was pretty much clear

and retired, but then wouldn't actually retire. He played big three for several years. He played a game with Boston at age 40 after the playing of the big three for like two or three years. That might have delayed things a little bit. He's now in his mid-40s. He's obviously done now, but perhaps that delayed things a little bit. I think he has a Hall of Fame case. I'm doing this intentionally the shorter version, but I think Joe has an actual basketball Hall of Fame case. For example, he has the same amount of points and more awesome teams than Mitch Richmond. He was in the Hall of Fame. He has a much better stat profile than Chauncey Phillips. He was in the Hall of Fame and I know he won his title, which is why he's there, but that's notable to me. His former teammate and Phoenix, the Mario Steinemire, had a higher peak than Joe probably, but Joe had the longer and probably better career overall and Mario's in. I could go on and on. I would say I'm confident in saying that if Joe got elected to the Hall of Fame, he would fit in with the current bar that's been set for the Hall of Fame. This is the new statement for me, but based on what the Hawks have done, all we can go

on again. No Jackson standard. All we can go on is what the Hawks have done with retired jerseys. The ones that are a lot, you know, neek being up there, Bob Pettit. Those are the obvious ones. Cliff Hagen. It is one of this. My bar is basically, they set it with Marybitch and Batonbo. That's what I think. If you want to argue, the bar should be higher. That's different argument. But for me, if you're going to retire, Marybitch and Batonbo, Joe Johnson should be up there. So I would retire Joe's number. He's been, he's now, he is retired now. With guys like Al Horford and maybe we'll get to Treyong in a few years, those are like cases that you have to wait on because they're not retired from the league. Joe's been out of league now for a few years. I think it's time to retire Joe's number. Was he the most exciting player in the world? No, is he a huge personality? No, but Joe Johnson, honestly, I think was just a more valuable and did more stuff in Atlanta than Pete Marybitch. And Pete Marybitch is more famous. I get it. But I think it's slept on a little bit what Joe actually meant to the Hawks.

Like that's, if you were, if you weren't there before Joe arrived, and this may like fall on deaf ears to some degree. But over the course of like Joe arrived in 2005, 2006, the Hawks were not very good. That season, but they were much better than they had been previously. And then the next year they got better. And then his third season in Atlanta, they were, they made the playoffs and took Boston to that seven game series. Like he arrived and yes, in conjunction with Alan Josh, that's fair. They became like respectable and it's hard to explain that now because the Hawks have been pretty decent for a while. Not great all the time, a pretty decent. When I was a teenager, the Hawks were terrible. Like they were a laughing stock for years. And that's not Joe Johnson was heavily responsible for stopping that. I'll just read off like when I was in high school, the basically the Hawks were going 28 wins, 25 wins, 33, 35, 28. Then when I was going to college, 13 wins. And then Joe arrives, they win 26, 30, 37, 47, 53 on the way up.

Like that's not a coincidence. He was a part of that. So I'll leave it there for now. Yes, I'm tower's number. No, I don't know what the Hawks are going to. And I don't really have the reason other than it's really there just they don't have it. They don't have a standard and it's like they're going to just decide and we'll see what that actually happens at that point time. All right. Last thing in a second will be getting to the latest news around the Hawks, coding some staff announcements and some transactions that cause a bit of confusion in the last couple days, we're getting all of that more after working with partners on the show. When you run a business, it should not feel like you're just trying to connect something together in systems wise that was not designed to actually work together. Maybe it's one after accounting, one for inventory, and everyone for sale and somehow none of them actually speak to each other. That's where Odo comes in to help. Odo is the all in one business management software that brings every part of the business together in one powerful platform from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing and more everything works in one place, helping your team to move faster, stay organized and focus on growing the business instead, just managing the software at the same time. The best organizations know that success is not just about talent, it's actually about

having everybody working toward the same goal at the same time. That is true in sports. It's also true in business. One thing I actually said to me about the best organizations in this sports world is that they get everybody pulling in the same direction. It's not just one great player, one great coach, executive staff or even the owner. It's a coordinated effort up and down the organization that makes things successful. Renewations organizations win because operations matter and that's why you should get Odo right now. Odo is one platform to manage, grow and scale your business, try for free today at odu.com. Slash locked on. That's Odo that's Odo. Odo.com. Slash locked on. One more time. Odu.com. Slash locked on. All right. In the last couple of days, we've been some press releases from the Hawks that I wanted to touch on. One was the staff announcements. Basically, at some point every summer, the Hawks sent out a flurry of front office and coaching announcements. That's been happening starting last week when the Hawks announced the promotion of Ryan Silverstein to the GM job of the college park, Skyhawks and the G league and Sanjay Lumpkin

as they had coach of that club. That was detailed on the podcast at the end of last week. Then on Tuesday, the Hawks announced a trio MBA front office moves, one of which was already known. That was to our internal promotions. The biggest one is Pure Dimwitty, who is now been promoted to the executive vice president of basketball operations. If you didn't know this already, Dimwitty was hired last summer as the senior VP of strategy analytics alongside Bryson Graham. They were brought in as kind of the co number twos under Onsy. Graham by the way, if you missed it, went to take the top job with the bulls this summer. So Dimwitty is the last man standing there basically. This move cemented him as the clear number two, you know, top lieutenant to Onsy. He spent about 20 years with the six, six years and pastures before this. Dimwitty is extremely well respected around the league. He's been doing the number two job already since Bryson left. That's like four months now. Everyone loves Pure Dimwitty. Honestly, it's kind of funny, but everyone loves him. And now it's been formally announced. So title bump for him, promotion.

He's entrenched behind Onsy and certainly someone that I would feel good about if I was a Hawksman being in the front office. Another one is that Tim Bonds' hips higher was now officially announced. That's been well known and reported on for like two and a half months, standing back to late June. But now he's officially announced as a advisor and strategic advisor for the Hawks. The former ESPN reporter has a new title, I was thinking for the Hawks. They're not in the business of announcing like roles and like what's going to actually happen. The Bonds has been working for a while for the Hawks and that wasn't a surprise. No, no, no, official. And then lastly, Maxwell Cupcheck has been promoted to the director of cap strategy and player personnel. That role was held essentially by Silverstein previously before he went to College Park. It's a promotion for Cupcheck. He's been with the Hawks for four years after being in Charlotte before that. Also he's like a decade younger than me, which makes me feel very old. I have to say that out loud. So anyway, that's the latest on that. And then the last thing is that the Hawks announced two player transactions in the last two days.

The first one was on Tuesday and it inspired the annual freak out from people that don't only follow the process that closely, they just saw a player being announced as signed. So the Hawks signed Devon Hicks and people were already asking like, wait, the Hawks have two new players already, what are they doing, etc, etc. The answer is this is very simple standard procedure. Last year at the same time, the Hawks signed Javin Johnson, not J.O. and J.V. Johnson and Dwight Murray Jr. and Lamont Butler and Malik Williams. The year before it was Kevon Harris, Joey Hauser, Jordan Bowden, Jordan Nicholas and J.R.K.L. joiner. The year before that it was Chris Silva, J.R.K.L. joiner, Brandon Randolph, David Singleton. So you get the gist. They're signing these guys to training camp contracts that are non-guaranteed. Basically they're signing Hicks, Wednesday sign Hicks. By the way, he's already been waived. He was waived the next day. And basically, as I said, explain this on Twitter, they're signing him to have his J.R.K.L. rights.

That's basically what this comes down to. Once he is waived, which he already has been, Hicks is going to likely end up in College Park where he probably should be. He played summer league last year with the Hawks this summer, played with College Park last season. A local guy played in Gwinnett County as a high school player, George Southwestern University at the college level. Not only did he have a prostate really 26 years old, so I understood the confusion with Hawks fans. He won't be on Bigley Club. And then today, after they waived Hicks, they signed Kishon Bryant, who was a 66 forward with three years of G.L. experience. He played somebody with a bulls this season. Not someone that I am familiar with overly. He played in college at South Carolina and South Florida was a fine college player like Decent. Like, not from what I understand, a huge NBA prospect at this stage. I believe he is 26 as well, he'll be 27 pretty soon. But I think he'll be waived in the near future like Hicks was. It's a camp deal. The Hawks still have 17 players on their roster right now.

Yes, there'll be resolution in the next six, seven weeks, what they're going to do between those two things. But until they sign some money, that's like not automatically going to be waived. It doesn't have huge news. And they don't like, it's just normal procedure. They have a roster spot available to charm these guys. And again, the goal is to have them be assigned to college park, have their rights and go ahead and sign them to the Bigley Club is a way to do that. So no harm to foul. And I understand the confusion, but nothing else to be bothered by at this point. All right, everybody, that's all I have on a Wednesday night into Thursday here in September. PSA, I have more player castles coming with Glenn Willis in the near future and will be firing up our annual over under series with my friend Robbie, count of CBS sports. We talk about the entire league, conveniently, division by division four, man, I talk about some overunders, but mostly it's like a season preview of sorts. So that'll be coming up plus the latest on the training campside when that when we get their any transactions, etc. So go ahead and please, please, please lock in right now and subscribe to this, to this podcast, lots on hawks, anywhere you find your podcasts, Apple Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Follow the show on X slash Twitter and lots on hawks following me there. I be T rolling, following me on blue sky BT Roland and then follow my non podcast coverage of the hawks, which is found at patreon.com slash BT Roland. Everybody enjoy the rest of your evening. We'll see you all next time. The Lakton podcast network is brought to you by Fandall baseball fans. If you think you know who's hitting a home or today, Fandall is giving you a free chance to call your shot with daily dingers. It's easy to play. Just make your free pick for who you think will hit a home run in their game. If you're right, you'll receive a profit boost to use on your next bet for a chance at extra winnix. Best of all, you can make a free pick every day throughout the MLBC's. Are you ready to play your game today? Join all the action at fandall.com. That's fandall.com to play daily dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a home run. Play ball and swing for the fences on Fandall, an official partner of the MLBC. Thank you for making Lakton your first listen every day. For your second listen, find the Lakton NBA podcast where there's no off season. West Matt and Hayes keep you up to date on contract negotiations, rumors and everything

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