Atlanta Hawks Edition

With the 3:00pm trade deadline coming to a close, the Hawks were unable to trade Josh Smith. Josh this season has recorded 17.2pts, 8.6reb, 4.2ast, 1.2stl, and 2.1blk in 35.8mpg (as of 2/21/13). The 6’9″ PF has been a hot commodity in the trade market the past few months, but due to his contract expiring this summer, teams were left conflicted with the thought of trading young and valuable assets to Atlanta for an unrestricted free agent that could go play somewhere else in the offseason. Multiple suitors including Brooklyn, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Houston, Phoenix, and Milwaukee were in the hunt in the weeks coming up to the deadline.
The offer most aggressive came from Nets’ offer of Kris Humphries/MarShon Brooks/1st (or rights to Bojan Bogdanovic). Atlanta crowdsourced other offers without any luck, getting offers like Sprus’ DeJuan Blair, Sixers’ Evan Turner/Spencer Hawes, Celtics’ Paul Pierce, Wizards’ Emeka Okafor, when they were looking for younger, more talented offers like Omer Asik/Chandler Parsons from Rockets, Marcin Gortat/Jared Dudley/picks from Suns, and Monta Ellis/Ekpe Udoh from Bucks. The Bucks were in talks up to the deadline, but were reluctant to trade Monta Ellis due to Josh Smith’s request for them to keep their backcourt of Ellis and Brandon Jennings and to find other trade pieces for him. In final minutes, Atlanta was in a three-way trade with Milwaukee and Orlando, with Milwaukee receiving JJ Reddick and Josh Smith, but pulled out at the last minute.
Atlanta was rumored into looking for young prospects, draft picks, and expiring contracts to help Atlanta build a young core with enough cap space in the offseason to go after big free agents (Dwight Howard).

GRADES:
JOSH SMITH: Josh gets half a season to prove he’s worth a max contract when he’s an Unrestricted Free Agent. If Josh is traded at the deadline, he would have to see a dip in his numbers in a contract year due to the time it would take for him to get comfortable in another teams system. A-

HAWKS: By keeping Josh, you risk seeing your most talented player walk with nothing to show for it. Although this is the most likely scenario, Atlanta can still offer him a contract this offseason. With Joe Johnson’s contract off the books, Atlanta is in a rare position to attract two big free agents while keeping their core of Al Horford and Jeff Teague. Even if Josh signs a max contract with another team, Atlanta can still go the Sign and Trade route, bringing in something, although the return would be far less than the offers given at the trade deadline. Still, this gives Hawks basketball a half season of what if, and who knows, maybe can go far in the Playoffs. Either way, Atlanta is going to have a lot of money to play with in the future and Ferry knows how to spend wisely, possibly by signing Josh to a contract up to 5 years $94 Mil. B-