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Is Hawks president Travis Schlenk fighting a battle he's already lost?

Schlenk fired Lloyd Pierce on Monday, but will he be the next to go?



It is pretty easily deduced that ownership gave Schlenk something of a playoff mandate this season, expediting, and in many ways undermining, his previously patient timeline while informing his decision to pursue win-now players in Bogdanovic and Gallinari over continuing down the development trail.

Along that trail, the Hawks have done good things. It's possible Schlenk is fighting a battle with Atlanta management that he already lost back in 2018, when he traded the rights to Luka Doncic to the Mavericks for Trae Young and a future first-round pick, which became Cam Reddish. We have endlessly debated the merits of that trade for the last two-plus seasons, but the bottom line is this: For as great as Young has been offensively, not to mention the tantalizing upside Reddish has shown in stretches, it's hard to imagine Hawks ownership is happy that Luka isn't on their team.

Luka is a championship-level alpha, plain and simple. Trading him is probably never going to be looked upon favorably from the Hawks' perspective. If this is the root of ownership's frustration, which has manifested itself as premature urgency to make the playoffs ahead of schedule, it stands to reason they're not going to be looking for reasons to keep the general manager who pulled the trigger on giving Luka away. They're going to be looking for reasons to get rid of him. That isn't necessarily fair, and who knows if it's even the case. Perhaps Schlenk is safe. But you have to wonder, if the Hawks don't turn their season around under interim coach Nate McMillan, if Schlenk is next in line to be let go. And if so, is it a battle he's already lost?

John Hollinger wrote:Pierce’s firing raises bigger questions about Hawks’ decisions

The clock has now started ticking on this front office, led by general manager Travis Schlenk.

The Hawks’ mandate to make the playoffs this year precipitated a torrent of spending that has largely proven fruitless, and while the injuries to Dunn and Bogdanovic were unfortunate, the Rondo and Gallinari additions have been clear failures.

Moreover, the depth pieces just aren’t there; there haven’t been any crafty minimum or low-dollar exception guys making up for the disappointments elsewhere. The trade deadline looms and some important decisions are right on the horizon. Schlenk may only have one more offseason to get this right, and he has a lot of questions to answer in this second half of the season.

• Is John Collins part of the future? If so, is he worth a likely max contract? If not, can they trade him for something that they like better?
• Is the sixth overall pick, center Onyeka Okongwu, any good? If so, might they play him in a game at some point?
  
• Can they swing a trade or signing that finally addresses the carnage at backup point guard?
  
• Can they salvage something from Gallinari and limit his exposure on defense?
  
• Is McMillan part of the solution going forward, or a mere stopgap before the Hawks open a full coaching search this summer?

Figuring out the answers to those questions and similar ones over the next 12 months will likely define the future for the Schlenk regime. For now, we can say that if the Hawks weren’t all-in on their coach in the first place, they probably would have been better served doing this sooner and bringing in their first choice.

In an interview with The Athletic before the start of the season, when Ressler was asked what his confidence level was in Pierce and Schlenk as a duo, the team’s owner said he needed to see more out of them before being sure they were the ones who would lead the team to a title one day.

“All I can say is I think Travis and Lloyd are a superb team so far, but please understand let’s win a bit,” Ressler said. “We really do believe that last year’s season was difficult for so many reasons, including the fact that it stopped early just when we started playing good basketball...We’ve done some good things, not just on the court but in coaching and in our front office.

“I feel great about where we are starting the season...I look forward to talking to you guys whether it’s at the midseason point or end of season. We should be so much better, and it’s going to be painfully obvious. We’ll see.”