Hawks Trade John Collins To Jazz In Salary Dump

Keith Smith
Keith Smith, Resident NBA ExpertJune 26, 2023
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#nba #trade #john collins #john collins #rudy gay #rudy gay #atlanta hawks #utah jazz #atlanta hawks #utah jazz
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It finally happened! The Atlanta Hawks traded John Collins. After years (without even a hint of exaggeration) of rumors, Atlanta found a trade partner for Collins and the $78.5 million in remaining salary on his contract.

Collins will head to the Utah Jazz in exchange for Rudy Gay and a second-round draft pick.

Not exactly an overwhelming return for Atlanta, until the Hawks get to look at a significantly cleaner, and cheaper, future cap sheet. And that’s what drove this trade, more than anything Atlanta got back in terms of the player and the pick.

The Mechanics

This trade is another one that will have to take place after the league year changes over. There’s two parts to that and both are equally fascinating.

Let’s start with the Hawks side. Atlanta is sending out John Collins and his $25,340,000 salary, so they could have easily absorbed Rudy Gay’s $6,479,000 salary in the deal. But to maximize the amount of the Traded Player Exception (TPE) they can create, the Hawks will take Gay into their existing TPE for Justin Holiday.

Here’s where it gets fun! That Holiday TPE is $6,292,400. Under the current CBA (which expires when the calendar flips to July 1), the Holiday TPE wouldn’t have been big enough to absorb Gay’s salary. But in the new CBA, the little bit of extra matching in a trade increases from $100,000 to $250,000. That increase will allow Atlanta to bring Gay in via the Holiday TPE. The Hawks will then create the league’s currently largest TPE of $25,340,000 for the full value of Collins’ outgoing salary.

On the Jazz side of the trade, they are bringing Collins in via cap space, so they need to delay until the year flips to have that cap space. Utah will have enough cap space to do this deal, whether Jordan Clarkson and/or Talen Horton-Tucker opt out of their contracts or not. We currently project Clarkson to opt out (with the idea of adding more years onto his deal) and Horton-Tucker to opt in. But even if both opt in, the Jazz will have enough cap room to complete this deal.

If Clarkson opts out as projected, Utah will use a large chunk of their available cap space. Pre-trade for Collins, we projected the Jazz to have $47.2 million in cap space. After trading for Collins, we now project Utah to have $28.4 million in cap space.

Utah Jazz

Incoming 2023-24 Salary: $25,340,000
Outgoing 2023-24 Salary: $6,479,000
Difference: $18,861,000

We’ll start with the Jazz, because they are the ones acquiring a player to play for them. Is John Collins a perfect fit in Utah? Not really. Is he a bad fit? Not even close.

On the cap sheet, this is grabbing Collins virtually for free. Unless Utah had dreams of spending big on free agents, this is good spending of money they had to spend anyway. The Jazz have very little salary locked in beyond this upcoming season, so adding Collins does very little to limit future flexibility.

On the court, Collins will fit better than many think. He should slot in between Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler in one of the NBA’s biggest frontcourts. For those who didn’t spend a lot of time watching the Jazz last season, that might seem like a wonky fit, but Markkanen is really a jumbo-sized three. He’s played at small forward a lot the last two seasons, with both Utah and the Cleveland Cavaliers before that. It’s a spot where Markkanen is comfortable and a dominant offensive weapon. Defensively, it’s not perfect, but Kessler is pretty good at cleaning up messes at the rim.

If Collins can recover his shooting form (he dipped to just 29% from three after being at 38% over the first five years of his career), he’ll fit in just fine in a versatile, inside-outside frontcourt. Collins will also help further add to what was a dominant rebounding team, especially when Kessler became the starting center.

This trade also buys even more time for rookie Taylor Hendrick to adjust to the NBA, as he projects to be the primary backup behind both Markkanen and Collins. It also frees up the Jazz to trade Kelly Olynyk, should they find a deal they like.

Mostly, this trade is about Danny Ainge and Justin Zanik picking off an undervalued player because the Hawks had to get out of the luxury tax for this season and had to create some long-term flexibility.

Atlanta Hawks

Incoming 2023-24 Salary: $6,479,000
Outgoing 2023-24 Salary: $25,340,000
Difference: -$18,861,000

The Hawks part of this trade is simple: They cleared out lots of space around the luxury tax line for this season, going from $5.4 million over the tax to about $8.8 million under the tax. In addition, Atlanta got off the $78.5 million owed to Collins through 2025-26.

The former is good and helps new general manager Landry Fields achieve a reported mandate to get under the tax line for this season. But the latter is the real win here.

Even without Collins in the picture, the Hawks have over $277 million in guaranteed salary committed to just five players through 2026-27. For just the 2024-25 season, Atlanta has over $139 million locked in for seven players. Both short- and long-term the cap sheet was bloated with Collins on the books. Now, that’s less of an issue.

That’s important because Atlanta has three rotation players up for new contracts between now and next summer. Dejounte Murray is highly unlikely to extend his deal this season, as he’d leave too much money on the table, even with the NBA’s more-lucrative veteran extension rules. But Murray is going to get a hefty deal in free agency in 2024, be it from the Hawks or someone else. Atlanta can feel better about it being from them with Collins’ contract out of the picture.

This summer, both Onyeka Okongwu and Saddiq Bey are eligible for rookie scale extensions. Okongwu is seen as a key part of the Hawks future, so he probably benefits the most in the immediate from Collins being traded. Fields and crew can feel a lot better about locking up Okongwu long-term with Collins off the books.

Bey is in a bit of a weirder spot, but his chances of landing either an extension from Atlanta, or a new deal as a restricted free agent in 2024, go way up with Collins out of the picture. Some of the Hawks desire to extend Bey will be dependent on how they see the forward spot between him, De’Andre Hunter and Jalen Johnson playing out.

On the court, this trade won’t do much for Atlanta. Rudy Gay might stick around as a locker room veteran, or he could be waived to open up a roster spot for a younger player. Presumably either Bey or Johnson will slide into the starting lineup, with the other becoming the primary backup forward. The new, giant TPE won’t get used right away, but it’s a nice thing to have handy to help execute a trade down the line.

No matter if it was driven by a mandate to dodge the tax this season, or to free up long-term cap/tax flexibility, the Hawks achieved their goal of finally trading John Collins. Now, Atlanta has to go about figuring out how to be better on the court with the formerly longest-tenured Hawk off to Utah.


#nba #trade #john collins #john collins #rudy gay #rudy gay #atlanta hawks #utah jazz #atlanta hawks #utah jazz
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