BS Report: The Dort Report
On Sunday, the Atlanta Hawks made another big move in their all season as they made a three team deal with the Dallas Mavericks in the Oklahoma City Thunder. Atlanta trade Zachary Resources, the number one overall pick from the draft a couple of years ago and a couple of second round draft picks three, as a matter of fact, two Dallas and Oklahoma City.
Lu Dort back to Atlanta, along with a point guard coming from Dallas. Ryan Nembhard. So the Hawks actually helped the Oklahoma team that was in some financial trouble with the second apron. And that saved them some tax dollars for the NBA’s salary scale. And Atlanta takes advantage of the interest that Dallas had in Zachary Sasha. They almost traded him there back in February before the trade deadline for Daniel Gafford.
Well, so Atlanta wanted a more defensive presence and they needed that physicality. And they bring in Lu Dort who was one of the best defensive players in the NBA. Now he’s only six four and he’s a guard. But he plays just about everybody not named wimpy on on the court. He is a really good defensive player. He was an all defensive team player, a first team a couple of years ago, the same year that Dyson Daniels of the Hawks was on that team.
And he is has been known as a defensive stopper and real aggressive and kind of mean, which is kind of something the Atlanta Hawks need after getting pushed around by the New York Knicks. You know that you may remember the draft several weeks ago. They drafted Subhadra for who was a player for Saint John’s and the Big East Defensive Player of the year.
He has got that kind of physicality that the Hawks were looking for. And so now they bring in Lu Dort, who will help, guard some of the perimeter players out outside a little bit. And that should lock down some players like Jalen Brunson and Desmond Bane, some of the other good players in the Eastern Conference. So combine him with Dyson Daniels, Nickeil Alexander-Walker also a very good player.
They got Aaron Wiggins earlier in the season in a trade with Oklahoma City. He’s a really good defensive player. So that on help as well. And the Hawks are trying to kind of rebuild this team. They now have on the roster 11 players who were not on the opening night roster back in late October of this past season.
So once they kind of moved on from Trae Young, the writing was kind of on the wall that they were going to move on. Also from Zachary Research. And you got to remember on Clay, the general manager of the Atlanta Hawks was not the GM who selected risk with that first overall pick two years ago. That was Landry Fields.
Now, maybe Onsi Saleh liked Zaccharie Risacher as well. But sometimes when there’s a new GM, you’ll see that kind of change that will go on where he’s not loyal to a player that he didn’t draft. Ray Sachet was in a really mediocre draft, and it was a lot of pressure on that young man to fill that spot as the number one overall player, and he was never going to be a typical number one overall player, like a win B or a Cooper Flagg or AJ De Barnes or someone like that.
He was always projected to be a pretty decent NBA player, but the expectation for their most overall player is always going to be sky high, and he was never going to reach that. And I think after he got hurt this past season and then when he came back, C.J. McCollum had kind of taken over another starting spot on the team, which pushed Zach to the bench.
He was unhappy wanting to play more, which they all should. And I think he kind of fell out of favor where the writing was on the wall for him to be a casualty, if you will, for this all season. So they trade him for Lu Dort, who has an expiring contract, and the Hawks could have as much as 40 million plus to come off the books to go sign a big time free agent next summer during free agency, but they are definitely going to be tougher.
