OKC Thunder trade deadline: Hawks options offer depth and future salary relief

Needs:

Schlenk will clearly be looking to add more draft picks but there is also room on the Hawks roster to fill specific roster gaps. The two most obvious being to add a lanky defensive minded backcourt partner to pair with Trae Young and a young center who can be paired with the exceptional John Collins.

Although Schlenk could attempt to solely accomplish this via draft picks don’t rule out the GM considering young talents who’ve already demonstrated capacity to fill specific roles or players who the team deems would be good chemistry fits or athletically compatible with the existing developing core.

Most likely available trade assets:

Given the Hawks rebuilding position, the more accurate question is who isn’t available to be traded. Clearly Young and Collins are the cornerstones of the rebuild. Rookie Kevin Huerter is another key piece and there is varying degrees of belief Bembry is also a foundational piece. The latter even more likely given Bembry has seemingly ascended into the role the Hawks once earmarked Prince to fulfill.

Of the other roster members, there are key veterans like Dedmon and Lin who could immediately help a contender looking to add depth. As for the younger assets, Kent Bazemore is a player the Hawks would like to move given his salary commitment while the new direction of the franchise has made Len and Prince assets the franchise would be open to moving in exchange for better fits or draft picks.

Our sister site Soaring Down South touched on several of these players in two recent articles highlighting the players most likely to be on the block.  In the first article, Chris Guest looked at a mock draft the Dunc’d On Basketball podcast crew discussed.  In another trade article, Guest examined three trade options for Prince and Dorsey. Visit the Soaring Down South site as there are a number of interesting trade articles on their numerous assets up for grabs.

For the purposes of our trade primer, we’re going to isolate on wings and perimeter shooting so the two players we’ll focus on are Taurean Prince and Dewayne Dedmon.