Atlanta Hawks offseason storylines: Dyson Daniels extension, front office changes, young core, etc.

Atlanta Hawks offseason storylines: Dyson Daniels extension, front office changes, young core, etc.

On today’s show, there are more than a few storylines around the Atlanta Hawks heading into the offseason. On today’s podcast, we’ll touch on four of the biggest ones with even more to come later on. We’ll get into all that right now. You are Locked On Hawks, your daily Atlanta Hawks podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello friends, welcome to episode 1966 of the LT on Hawks podcast. I am your host Brad Rolling coming to you on a Thursday here at the very beginning of the month of May. And today’s podcast is brought to the folks at Monarch Money. Take control of your finances right now with Monarch Money and use code locked on NBA at monarchmoney.com for half off your first year. I also want to encourage you at the top of the podcast as I always do to make us your first listen each and every day here at Lock on Hawks. We are part of the locked on podcast network and you can find us anywhere you find a podcast that includes Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Please subscribe slashfollow the podcast and be sure tell your friends about the show. In a second I’ll be diving into the topic of today’s podcast which is a bunch of offseason storylines but I want to tell you at the top of the show also it’s been a very busy week on Hawks podcast. We had a two-part NBA draft deep dive with my friend Brian Schroeder earlier this week. Before that a deeper look at Trey Young’s status and future in Atlanta. Plus yesterday, Wednesday evening, a reaction to Dyson Daniels winning the most improved player award, plus Zachary coming in second, her rookie of the year, etc. Dice comments to the media after the award was announced. A busy show on Wednesday night. And uh basically, this is our fifth show of the week. We are not slowing down at all. In fact, we’re ramping up more and more in advance of the draft for agency, summer league, etc. And that’s actually a good segue to today’s podcast because the plan basically is over two episodes, this will be the first of two to tackle eight major offseason storylines for the Hawks. the first four on this episode and four will be next week on an episode. I did this last year in two-part fashion as well. Got pretty good feedback on this. So, I wanted to do this kind again to kind of set the table a little bit for the offseason. Some of it will be repetitive. I understand that. Some of it will be new to some people and not new to other people. It’s intentionally broad, but also with a little bit of detail to uh kind of touch all the quadrants here. And honestly, this is going to happen last week except for the Hawks upended things when they fired Landry Fields, honestly, and introduced a whole dynamic into the equation that was not there before. So, um, it’s been busy reacting to that and all the news around it, etc., but I’ll just say again, like this, some of the stuff is going to be intertwined together. It goes without saying that nothing is done in a vacuum in the NBA, but some of the stuff that going to overlap more directly than others. It’s also not all-encompassing. Like, these eight things are not the only eight story lines of these season as well. Obviously, you can you spend money and resources on one area and kind of take away from another area, etc. Investing in the roster in one way might move resources away from another area of the roster. I won’t do a full salary cap and tax deep dive as part of this, but clearly would be help helpful for the front office, whoever runs that to be knowing what the limit is for Tony Wrestler’s spending perhaps. Are they actually going to spend big on a consistent basis or is there a clear red line at the tax? Like that’s an interesting and important question. of course that’s just one aspect but kind of flow flow through everything honestly from the mid-level exception to trade exceptions what they offered to Caris Levert to Trey Young Dyson Daniel Daniels all kinds of things there so there’s tons of different story lines that we’ll touch on and they’re influenced by each other I’m not pretending otherwise but I’m getting into kind of eight separate things here again four of them on this show and also the plan is to have player castles again this summer where we kind of dive into players in real depth on an episode per player basically so that won’t be here either so that’s that’s going to come later on too, but stay tuned for that, etc., etc. All right, these are not in order specifically, but they’re kind of in some rough like timetable order for some of these. But the first one is happening first because it’s both timely and very, very important to the future and they have to move pretty quickly in my opinion. And that’s the decision who’s going to actually run the basketball operations show in Atlanta. That’s number one of the eight. One bit of news actually on this is that the front office stuff um is ramping up to some degree. Like it looks like two people are going to be leaving the front office that are kind of in the wake of the shakeup with Landry Fields. Not a surprise by the way that people would kind of leave when the GM is fired. But Chris Haynes reported first that Grant Lithman, who was hired as a scout and has been elevated to VP of basketball operations in the last year or two, is now out in Atlanta. Lithman has a higher profile than most people in his job because he used to be a sports writer. Like he has a big following because of that. Um, Grant’s a good guy, was always around the team, but uh is moving on by all accounts. And then Mike Scott reported that former agent Chris Emmens, who was hired as an adviser to the Hawks back in 2023, is quote not expected to remain end quote with the Hawks. So, I’m assuming he’ll be moving on from that advisor role. Not massive swings, obviously. They’re not at the level of someone like Anie or Kyle Corver or whatever, but they’ll probably have to hire a couple more people whenever they hire the top person. And that’s what this actually is. So the big picture topic of this beyond the news is quite frankly who’s going to be in charge of basketball operations. Some of that is Tony wrestler and it will always kind of be that way um for better and for worse. But I didn’t include this because of the rumor mill stuff only. It’s genuinely uncertain right now who’s going to be at the top of the organization. That is real. That’s a real thing. Bob Myers is a big name but people that I talked to are skeptical of that actually happening. He seems to be fine at ESPN for example. Tim Connley from the Wolves would be a big get, but Minnesota just won a playoff series. I don’t think he’s gonna probably leave for Atlanta if I had to guess right now if he can be a free agent this summer if he wants to be. Elton Bran as a candidate. I like Elton a lot, but his first stint as an executive in Philly was not great. He’s highly regarded, but I don’t think the Hawks would be falling over themselves probably to hire and celebrate that hire for what they’ve actually been trying to put out there as what they want in that role. Uh Mike Scott reported two more candidates on Tuesday this week actually with John Hammond and Sharifa Durim. John Hammond is currently a senior adviser in Orlando. He was the GM there at one point. Also was the executive for the Bucks for a while, 10 years agoish. He’s also 70 years old. I’m not sure like how much that matters, but it’s a relevant data point that you might want to not bring in that kind of overhaul for a guy who’s kind of in that senior adviser role in Orlando right now. Uh, Sheriff Darheim, obviously a big name, former Hawks player, very good NBA player for a long time. He’s from here. He went to Wheeler High School in Cobb County. Big name locally. He’s currently the president of the G-League right now. But he also has never run an NBA team. So, I’m not sure where that kind of slots in on wrestlers stated desire to hire someone with experience running a team. He’s not done that to this point in time. So, I won’t say everything that I’ve already said before about the process, but it’s already pretty odd that the Hawks have a firmly entrenched general manager in Aussie Salah and a firmly entrenched head coach and Coach Snder before they try to hire their bosses basically a president of basketball operations. And I still think, and I will say this, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Now, on May 1st, I think there’s a chance that Auntie Salah just ends up being the top executive. It may not be in the president of operations um title, but there’s a chance that I’ve heard and put together that like they they may not hire anybody and they might just go with an um who by the way is quite qualified to run a basketball team, I would say. But part of the uncertainty is that wrestler painted a very specific picture of what he wants in a senior level person with experience. But people fitting that bill aren’t generally super available. Like right now, the only person that really fits that bill that’s not currently running another team is Bob Myers. And if Bob Myers is not going to happen, and it probably won’t. I won’t say definitely won’t, but it certainly may not. You have to try like poach somebody else, which is hard to do. Maybe you get lucky if Connley just leaves willingly from Minnesota, but like it’s not an easy thing to do to hire an established senior level executive who has experience. Like yes, Elton Bran checks that box technically, but he did it once and it didn’t go well. So what does that mean? Does that mean that he checks the box? We’ll see. Long story short, it’s undeniably a massive storyline for the Hawks this summer. It could be done soon. Like, it’s May 1st right now. One thing actually people have been asking me about is like, how important is this for the Hawks to hire somebody before the before the draft? I’m like, well, pretty important because generally speaking, they may not be the the main scout, but that person, whoever it is, is going to make the decision on the draft pick a lot of the time. And the Hawks might have two picks and like it’s getting late early. Like the combine is in 10 days. Like, they want to be have somebody in place by them. I would, but we’ll see how that happens. But it all flows down. This is a big thing because this affects this affects every other decision. Who you hire to run your team affects what the guys you want to pay for players because they’re going to have their own preferences. How you want to hire handle the salary cap and the exceptions that you have, development, culture, all those things flow down from the top person in the organization. Yes, wrestler is that person, but whoever that number two is, number one in basketball operations is a big big big deal. and it runs the whole thing making big decisions shaping the team and uh that is number one on the list. I didn’t rank these in terms of importance but that’s certainly the one is like the easiest most prominent one right now because they don’t have someone to run the organization and that’s a big big deal as of May 1st. All right, more to come on today’s podcast with three more of the massive story lines to touch on this summer but first of our partners on the show is brought to you by Monarch Money. We’ve all done this, I’m sure. But at times in the past, I’d look at my bank account and wonder where all the money happens to go between dining out, online shopping, entertainment, or whatever it is. It’s easy to lose track sometimes of your money. And that’s where Monarch Money comes in. Monarch Money is your personal CFO, giving you full visibility and control over your finances. And it’s not just a budgeting app. It’s instead a complete financial command center at Monarch Money. You can track all of your accounts, your investments, and your spending in one place. You can stop just managing your money and start building wealth instead. When I started using Monarch, I realiz how much money I was spending on food, for instance. That’s just one example. 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If you don’t make picks, you might make trades. It’s kind of the start of the transaction cycle in the summer. The lottery is May 12th. The Hawks have the Lakers pick as number 22 overall. They probably will have the Kings pick, 93ish% chance to be 13th, 3% chance or so to be 14th, and about 4% to be not getting the pick at all. So 96 plus percent chance to actually have that second draft pick. So at least the clear planning would be to have two of the top 22 picks in the draft. And that’s a chance to add young talent into the pipeline. I will always stress it’s not always about, in fact, it’s usually not about helping the team for this first coming season. Most rookies are not the best, but you want to add for the future to develop and have pieces to fill your roster slots later on. Um, of course, how to use those picks is up for debate and question, and we’ll have much more coverage of that in the next eight weeks or so. Again, I talked to Brian Sharter earlier this week about a bunch of things to consider and players on a two-part episode. But one of those topics on that show was like how wide the universe of players is that the Hawks could draft at either 13, 14, or 22. It’s like 30 guys. I would say they’re like at least kind of in the mix at at those two spots. So, that’s a pretty wide range of players the Hawks could take. Last year, because they won the lottery, the range became like maybe five guys. This year, it’s like 30. So, that’s a big difference in how you prepare for a draft. And by the way, again, got to go back to the one to the first one, but who’s making the decision is a big big factor. There are guys like Cooper Flag who will be available obviously, but it’s a pretty wide range. And then there are philosophies, of course, like best available versus fit. I tend to lean to best available when tiering prospects up. And maybe if they’re close together, fit might matter some, but I generally would like to take best available. um the concept of being blocked like most of the time at least es especially when you’re not talking about point guards or centers guys could play together so it’s like oh they already have a position X like that’s not really how that works generally speaking take the best players if they fit in your culture in your system etc just to name some names in no order this is intentionally broad but at guard you have Jeremiah fears if he falls um kind of surprisingly you got Jayce Richardson Casper Yakosonis Learon Phylon Igor Demon, Ben Saf, Nolan Teror, Walter Clayton Jr., Cam Jones, and Boogie Fland. Some of those guys might not be in my top 25, but they’re in somebody’s top 25. So, there you go. Um, also a lot of the wings and forwards are very different positionally, but grouping them together a little bit, Khan Canel, if he shockingly fell, you have Liam McNeely, Nate Clifford, Rashier Fleming, Noah Sang, um, Carter Bryant, Yaka Lindaborg, Will Riley, Noah Penda, Hugo Gonzalez, Adutierro, Isaiah Evans, and Miles Bird. Again, not in any order and not always in my top 25. And then Bigs, Derek Queen probably going to be gone, but he’ll be a talked about. Common Malawok, same thing. But Asa Newell, Danny Wolf, Thomas Sorber, Ryan Cochrrener, Janai Broom, etc., etc. That’s like 30-ish guys that just named and there’s probably even more than that. So, keep in mind broad broad stuff there, but Bucks only have next year in 26 a swapped pick with the Spurs where they it’s only the worst of the two picks. That could be a decent pick, but still and then don’t have their own pick in the following year either. So, you need to fill the pipeline with more talent if you can help it when you when you’ve overextended in the past on the Jonte trade, all those things. But the draft is always a story line, but probably even more so when you have two picks. Obviously, last year the Hawks were in the national conversation and number one overall. That became a big topic for obvious reasons. This year less so, but when you have two probably two picks in the top 22, it’s a pretty big deal how you use those picks, either drafting guys, trading guys, etc. All right, number three is a broad one intentionally, and it’s basically what are the next steps for the young core of players. It’s a big summer for a lot of guys in the organization who are still developing. I won’t go through them all in huge depth. But like for instance, Jaylen Johnson is on the older side of this group, but he’s still only 23 years old. Like he’s been around for a while, but he’s very young. Mostly health for Jaylen after he missed the second half of the season, but I hope he’s back ready to work on his game later in the summer right up for training camp. He still has stuff that he can certainly improve on skill-wise. He knows that. They know that as a team. Always a big summer for young guys, generally speaking. Dyson Daniels just my most improved player obviously but still has some stuff he can improve on. He’s already proven to be a great defender. That’s not really up for debate. He’s awesome there. There are ways for him to develop on offense with the shooting which he talked about on Wednesday. I would say also his ball handling and his creation ability and maybe even like some one foot finishing like there’s little things there but Dyson’s already come a long way but there is more room to grow for him. Risha obviously is the poster child for this being number one overall pick last year being just turned 20 years old. a big natural step forward probably in year two for him. Obviously, the pedigree is big for him. He already showed the shooting improvement this year, which is nice to see, but how much stronger is he going to get? That’s a huge, huge factor. Where is his actual shooting baseline moving forward? How good? Like, I think it’s going to be good, but how good can he improve his ball handling and his individual creation abilities off the dribble, for instance? growth is not always linear and you can’t just expect him to be making a huge jump but clearly they’re going to need him to be better next year. He’ll play a lot of minutes and that’ll be very important for the team. And then more quickly like you got beat cr you got Mo Kobe Buffkin even Don Barlo like beat shot the ball really well this year still pretty young defensively though he slipped. What’s his role going to be? Mo was great later in the year defensively and it’s awesome on the end of the floor a lot of the time but offensively like can he make it workable basically on that end of the floor? Buffin’s got to stay healthy. We all know that. He can’t prove that till he proves it. But a skilled guy just has to stay on the court. Even Barlo, again, who they had the the least amount of investment in is just 22 years old. They signed him to a contract this year. He’s super young. He may not even be on the roster, but if he is, like he’s a talented front court player. Deaf piece, but still. I didn’t mention a Kong Woo, who is still pretty young entering year six. But a huge question there is like how real is the shooting improvement that that Anka had at the end of the year. I think I talked to people about this a lot around the league. If if a Kongu is the shooter that he flashed himself to be at the end of this last season that opens up so many things for the Hawks team building wise, how you run your offense and like I don’t know where that I don’t know how real it is. I I think he actually is a shooter now, but how good of a shooter, how aggressive of a shooter? because there are some guys at center who can stand out there and take shots. It’s another tier entirely to have a guy who’s like a real threat to fire away from three-point range and take real volume and make real shots. That’s a big distinction. So obviously just beyond that even more broadly, this is his first summer as right now like the clear starter at center like and this is a guy with pedigree. This is a top six pick in the draft not that long ago. So he’s a talented guy. We understand the size limitations. I get all that, but like big summer for him. He’s healthy, which he talks about in the extra interviews. He’s been banged up a lot in the summers. Going to the summer healthy and skill development is not a small thing. I I’ve said that about for years about guys, but just to say this, it’s really really helpful when young players finish the season healthy so that they can go into the summer healthy and get better. Not just rehab and get their bodies better, but like get improve their games. And most of the guys on the Hawks roster, basically everyone except for Jaylen and kind of Kobe who’s going to be back pretty soon anyway, are healthy at the end of the summer, which is a pretty big thing. So that was intentionally quick and broad, but a lot of the hope and optimism that a lot of Hawks fans have and honestly a lot of the stuff that the team has is about internal development. That’s not guaranteed to happen. Like there’s always this tendency and I don’t blame anybody for doing it to just assume that every player that you like on your team is going to get better and better and better and better. And the hope is that’s going to happen. But someone like even someone like that like Dyson or Jaylen who had like breakout kind of seasons. It doesn’t always go up up and up and up. You hope that it does. So development has to continue. Um and a lot of like like all of the core pieces all of Atlanta’s core pieces are 26 or younger. All of them. Trey Young’s 26. will be 27 pretty soon. He’s the oldest guy. Everybody else is like 24 younger. So like they have a lot of internal improvement that gives you optimism, but it has to actually happen for you to get to where you want to go if you are the Hawks. All right, more to come in a second after a word from our partners. All right, the fourth and final story line for this episode is the extension negotiations for Dyson Daniels. The summer between your third season and fourth season is when rookie scale players, so first round picks can negotiate and then eventually sign if they want to extensions with their teams. Dyson is now in that summer between year three and year four. Uh any deal he would sign this summer would not actually begin until the following season of 2627, but they can lock it in now. And the Hawks have had a pretty interesting kind of like mixed record of rookie scale extensions in the recent past. Obviously, the front office has turned over recently, but even then, just to give some history on this because this is an ownership level thing as well, this matters. Last year, they signed Jaylen to a good extension that I liked a lot and looks even better now, I think. Um, the year before in 2023, they did sign a Conga to an extension, but did not sign Sadi Bay to extension, which worked out pretty well on both counts. I think a Congo’s deal looks very favorable at this moment. In 2022, they signed me on a hard return to an extension that basically no one in the league and in the industry liked, including me. And then within six months, it looked like a bad contract. And by the end, to be fair, he played his way out of that and was able to be traded for pretty decent value. So, that’s a mixed review, but they signed that deal. Uh, I heard Tony was involved in that process, to say the least, but they signed it. There you go. Uh the previous summer in 2021, they signed Trey, which was an obvious auto decision after he had just led them to a conference finals appearance. Um they also signed Kevin Herder to an extension that they moved for positive value later on. Notable. Uh and then in 2020, they did not sign John Collins to an extension, but they did keep him in free agency the following summer as a restricted free agent. So I went all the way back to Collins because that’s an example of what can happen here. You don’t always have to sign the guy a year ahead because you do have match rights next summer if you don’t. They haven’t used those very much or really at all since Collins because Bay left because Bay got hurt and all those things. But with Collins, they could have squeezed him even harder, but that was a valuable thing if you want to kind of go into that. So all that to say, you don’t have to sign Dyson the year ahead. I know fans will want that. I think if you can get a good deal done, you want to do that for sure. But there is a dividing line and my philos my philosophy on this is always the following. If I am the team side, which is what we cover most of the time on the podcast. If you’re the team side, you only want to sign an extension a year ahead of time when you don’t have to if it is seen as team friendly. If you think you are getting a better value now than you will get next summer. If you don’t want to do that, if you don’t believe that, you don’t sign it. Because with Dyson, look, I love Dyson. That’s well, that’s well chronicled. If you don’t sign Dson this summer, the only way he’s going to make you look insane and get like the max next summer is if he blows up on offense and becomes like a really really really good offensive player. Would that be great for you financially? No. But would that be great for your team? 100% yes. And if that happens and he’s worth the max, you just pay the max. So it matters a little bit, but that’s one example, but keep that in mind. So, as for Dyson, uh, oh, by the way, this would have been the summer that AJ Griffin was actually exe eligible. That crashed out. He no longer play basketball. So, that’s obviously where we’re at him. And then next summer would be Kobe Buffin’s draft class, but some more uncertainty with all that. So, Dice is just 22 years old now. Obviously, the team loves him as they should. Uh, plenty of comparisons out there for his extension. Uh, the one that I have been using the most for very obvious reasons is Jaylen Suggs of Orlando. Um, and that’s one that I think Dyson’s agent will and should point to. They’re fairly similar players. Not exactly the same, but fairly similar players. Both guys were top eight picks in the draft. Both guys are defense first guards with real pedigree. Like Dyson came from overseas, but obviously and Suggs was a big time prospect. Real pedigree guys who were not like out of nowhere players. Um, who broke out in their third season. Suggs was looking a little bit shaky in in the first two years. Dyson in New Orleans wasn’t doing a whole lot. Both guys, year three was their big breakout right before their extension negotiations opened. Suggs got five years and 150 million. So 30 million a year for five years, which is the exact same deal basically that John the Jail Johnson signed and that was a year ago in a lower cap environment. So basically five for 150 now is not the same as it was a year ago. So like with inflation, not like the economic version of that, but like basketball version of that. When the cap is higher, it’s not the exact same percentage of the cap. This is why I tend to use percentage of the cap a lot. Anyway, the previous year, Devin Vel and Jay McDaniels got about five years for 130. Again, lower environment even still than Suggs. Those guys are more wings than guards. Vel more offense leaning. McDaniel is more defensely. Both guys though are clearly like role play like good players but role players not stars role players. And they both got 26ish million a year two years ago. So with proper like cap adjusted inflation that’s 30 or more million in the current environment. Keep that in mind. So, if you’re the Hawks, you could reasonably point to the fact that most of the time, not always, most of the time, defense does not get you paid as much as offense does. Now, there are exceptions to that, but that’s that’s a real reality most of the time. There also was a difference historically in rookie scale extensions like this for high pedigree players who were drafted high like Dyson like Suggs or for people that are not prospects on that level the whole way like for example or like veteran extensions for instance like Lou Dort is one that Hawks fans will point to because they want Dyson to decide for cheap. I get it whatever. Ludort was undrafted so he was working off of a not first round pick. It was a different cycle and yeah, he got like 18 million a year. Now, that deal is incredibly cheap for the Thunder. Even if I’m actually probably not the biggest Ludort fan in the world, but like that’s not that’s not a comparison that I would buy into if I am a rational actor in the market. Like, it’s not a comparison. Same with same with Alex Caruso, who I was asked about recently. Caruso was signing his like third or fourth contract. It’s not the same thing. Um, same with Herb Jones, by the way, who was second round pick, signed a super discounted deal that the Hawks would like obviously just die to have, but like that’s not a realistic option to offer nice names. So, you can obviously see what you want to see here for a player that does have offensive flaws. He absolutely does. Um, and that’s sometimes challenging, but I will be surprised, not shocked or impossible, but I will be surprised if a deal gets done that does not pay him 25 plus million a year. Now, again, I said if a deal gets done, which is not a guarantee that that happens. If the Hawks won’t go beyond 20 million a year or whatever, I don’t think Knights gonna sign that or and if he does, obviously the team would celebrate in the streets if that happened. But I would guess that probably doesn’t happen based on the very obvious comparisons. Going back to Suggs a little bit, I’m not saying Dyson is going to be better than Suggs. That’s a debate people can have. Sug is a more proven shooter, for example, and probably a more proven like on ball creator offensively. But make no mistake, that is the best comparison that is available in recent vintage. You don’t have to buy all of it. You don’t have to say that he’s going to get more than subs or should get more than subs. I’m not saying that either. But that is that is a clear thing that Dyson’s agent is going to bring up and should bring up because by the way, if you don’t know about like you don’t want to anchor to previous extensions too too much, but they come up in these negotiations. They 100% come up. Like people use stats to compare these things, but like this is an interesting case and obviously he didn’t win defensive player of the year. there’s no like trigger in his contract for making more money, but the fact that he’s an award-winning young guy, defensive player of the year, number two, like that’s probably going to help you if you’re Dicens’s agent to get him paid more. Um, keep in mind that again, I said 25 million, 25 million a year as my like kind of baseline for whether it gets done or not. If the Hawks will go there or higher, probably gets done. We’ll see. Keep in mind one more time that so the cap was 135 like two years ago. 25 million under that cap is a lot different than 25 million under the cap of 155 that’s about to happen this next year. I made this point a lot with Jon last year. People were like confused that I was saying how much of a bargain it was for Jon Johnson to sign for 30 million a year because 30 million a year is a lot of money. It used to be the max or more than the max not that long ago. But it’s all about the percentage of the cap. Much more than the raw dollars. I know the raw dollars are monopoly money. This is crazy money. I get all that in real life samples. But it was a steal to get Jay $30 million a year. It just was. And if Dyson signed that much money, whatever, the Hawks actually might use Jay as a comp in negotiation to Dyson. Now, they’re different players, but if you’re the Hawks, you could probably tell Dyson’s camp with a straight face, hey guys, Jaylen’s a better player than Dyson in our mind. And it would be hard for us in the locker room to give Dyson more than we gave Jayen. I’m not sure if they’re going to say that, but that’s not a crazy thing to say out loud to a in in negotiation. Regardless, I could do this. I could do this all day long. But one more time, Dyson doesn’t have to sign now. It’s interesting story line to follow all summer long. It could be done as soon as July 1st, which is two months from now or as most of these do, they drag on to October. So like a lot of the like no-brainer max ones like Trees for instance, Trey signed July one because it was there’s no negotiation really that happened there. Like it was like he’s gonna get a max. Most of the deals I said earlier, DeAndre’s deal, Herder’s deal, Jaylen’s deal, Aong Woo’s deal were all almost at the very end in October because most of the non-Max ones go all the way to the end. They don’t all do that. There’s usually like one or two that happen earlier that just get done, whatever. But, uh, if I had to guess, Dyson probably doesn’t get done October, but my guess right now is it probably gets done. Both sides have reasons to want to get done. Same thing with Jaylen as last I won’t repeat myself the entire time, but yes, Jayen took less than he maybe could have gotten, but also in raw life-changing dollars, if you can lock in $150 million at age 23, there’s a lot of real life incentive to that. And if you’re Dan, if you can if you can lock in five for 125 or whatever it’s going to be, that is lifechanging, family changing money, which does matter in the circumstance. So, all that said, that’ll be a fun story line to follow and we’ll get into that much much more as especially when the window opens starting in July. All right, everybody. That is four of the eight story lines I’ll be highlighting. Again, four more to come probably next week at some point, but uh they’re not like time sensitive, so they’re independent. That’ll be coming one more time. I would encourage you to listen to all the shows from this last week and last week. It’s been like an 11 show two week period between Lander getting fired, Tyler Jones came on, Brian Sharter came on, news, awards, rumors, all this stuff. So, it’s been very busy and we’re going to stay busy all the way into May, into June, into July. So, please subscribe anywhere you find your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, as well as Overcast. Also, follow us on YouTube if you want to watch us on the video side. If you’re a video watcher, that’s great. It would also help help me tremendously if you would also subscribe and download on audio. Same goes for the audio listeners. I personally am an audio listener to podcast, but if you want to like the show on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube. That’d be awesome as well. Comment there. I’d say of course active comment portal if you want to just leave some feedback. Also follow me on Twitterxt Roland. Follow the show, Longhawks. I am on blue sky at BT Roland. I’m also my extra kind of written work and extra audio stuff is at patreon.combtand. All right everybody, enjoy your Friday. Enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you all next time.

Brad Rowland (@BTRowland) hosts Episode 1966 of the Locked on Hawks podcast. The 2025 offseason will be interesting for the Atlanta Hawks and, in the first installment of a two-part miniseries, the show focuses on four storylines to monitor over the summer. This includes the search for a president of basketball operations, contract extension negotiations for Dyson Daniels, the development of young players like Zaccharie Risacher and Dyson Daniels, and the 2025 NBA Draft.

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