"We've been talking to Trae about moving without the ball from the first day he got here," Schlenk said. "I remember him looking at me like I was crazy when I told him the hardest time to score in the NBA is when you have the ball, but it's true. When you have the ball, you've got five sets of defensive eyes on you. When you don't have the ball, you maybe have one set of eyes on you, the guy who's guarding you, and there's a good chance even he's not paying full attention because he's doing what? He's looking at the ball.
"So, yeah, we spend a lot of time talking with Trae about that," Schlenk continued. "Just trying to get him to realize if he gives it up, and then gets right into moving, he's going to get great looks. But that's only possible if you have other guys on the floor who can facilitate. I say it all the time, and it sounds so elementary, but if you have five guys on the court who can shoot, pass and dribble, you're really hard to guard. But you look around the league, and there aren't a lot of teams who can put five guys on the court that can do all three. They can maybe do one or two things, but not all three. We want as many guys as possible who can do all three."
Enter Hunter, who comes out of Virginia as an elite defensive prospect on the wing, but also as a guy the Hawks believe has loads of offensive upside that he didn't necessarily get to show in his more conservative, pattern-oriented college system. The same goes for Reddish, a sweet-stroke shooter whose talent is unquestioned, but whose tendency to fade from the action in college, to just sort of disappear for stretches, was a universal pre-draft concern among scouts.
Now you factor in John Collins, a potential budding All-Star who Schlenk raves about, and this is the exciting core of a team that is, for all intents and purposes, the youngest in basketball.
All the while, the Hawks are projected to have some $70 million in cap space next season. Jaylen Brown just reportedly turned down the Celtics' four-year, $80 million dollar offer on the belief that he can get more next summer. This is premature, but given Schlenk's penchant for versatile two-way players, Brown would make a lot of sense.
That said, Schlenk is adamant he won't use the Hawks' cap space just because they have it.
"I think the biggest mistake teams make is they say, 'Hey, we have all this cap space and we have to spend it on somebody,' and they go out and get the wrong guy who doesn't fit the culture or the system, or just isn't worth the money, or whatever," Schlenk said. "Cap space can be a little bit of fool's gold in that way."
